Mitchell took Arielle up to his hotel room.
Walking out after kissing her last week had damn near given him an aneurysm. If she wanted things to stop, she could be the one to walk out this time.
As usual, Mitchell had reserved a penthouse suite for himself.
After an eons-long elevator ride up to the top, Mitchell waved his phone screen at the lock on the door and shoved it open in front of Arielle. “Allow me.”
She walked into the three-room suite and stared around herself. “Took the bigger room for yourself, huh?”
A chandelier glittered over the dining table with chairs for eight, and the living room couches and chairs could seat the same. The baby grand piano in the corner was primarily to fill space. Mitchell hadn’t played since he was in high school, and his mother had finally allowed him to quit taking lessons. He’d been absolutely average in his musical abilities, technically proficient enough to not get yelled at by his teacher and scheduled in the middle of the program at recitals. He’d preferred sports.
But yeah, now that Arielle mentioned it, the penthouse was a big hotel room.
He shrugged. “The convention runs over both days this weekend, so I’m staying until Monday for business meetings. Between Sunday afternoon and Monday morning, I have five appointments booked here. I’ll fly back to Connecticut Monday late afternoon. No matter where I go, I have business dealings with someone, and I prefer in-person meetings to the phone or video calls if I’m in town. If you’re also conducting business for Last Chance, Inc. and having high-level acquisition meetings, let me know, and I’ll get you your own penthouse suite with a living room for the meetings.”
She wandered among the living room furniture toward the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the black-velvet night.
Mitchell followed her like he was trailing in her wake, drawn to her.
Arielle stood by the window as if she were standing on a ledge looking down. “The Strip is so garish when you’re in the middle of it, but it’s pretty from up here.”
Mitchell walked up behind her and stood close enough that she should be able to feel the heat from his body on her back that the red and black dress left bare. He rested his hand against the cold glass, caging her between his body and the window.
The Las Vegas casinos sparkled far below as if the Milky Way had fallen from the sky and landed below their feet. Because the light was on behind them, Mitchell could see their ghostly reflections on the glass.
She whispered, “What would you do now if I was your girlfriend?”
The bottle and a half of wine that he’d drunk spoke for him, and he slid one arm around her waist, yanking her backward and against his chest.
Even through her dress and his suit, her softness was everything his body was not. Her femininity felt exotic and erotic against his torso and under his hands. “If you were my girlfriend, I’d hold you like this.”
He ran his other hand from the swell of her breast down her hourglass curves, tracing her silhouette.
“But I’m not, right?” she asked. “Because like this penthouse suite, these trips are all business to you.”
“Right,” he murmured. His reflection on the glass moved with him, dipping and rising as he ran his hand over her body. “This is all business, gorgeous.”
Her breasts plumped as she inhaled deeply through her nose, straining at the plunging neckline of her dress, and she laid her head back against his shoulder. Her perfume and natural female scent mixed with the wine in Mitchell’s head.
He was looking down from above her, finally able to stare at the delicate flesh of her tits that he’d had trouble looking away from all day. He wanted to plunge his cock between them, to feel their pillowy softness around his hard dick.
Her hair trailed over her shoulders. When he’d seen her in the press conference crowd at Match Play in Phoenix, her long hair past her shoulders had formed an image of wrapping that feminine silk around his fist as he took her or held her mouth on him. Sweet apples and flowers reached his nose when it trailed over his shoulder. He breathed in the scent, filling his nose and mouth and lungs.
“So if this is nothing but business, Mitchell, you should tell me what you would do if we were together.”
His mouth touched her temple before he’d decided what to do, and he kissed her skin down her neck, feeling her sway against his body, rubbing him through his clothes. “If we were together, I’d kiss your shoulders like this.”
His consciousness expanded to his skin. He craved her soft, fragrant flesh in his hands, under his mouth, and around his cock more than he wanted to breathe air.
He turned her body with his hands like they were dancing and crowded her back against the glass.
Her dark eyes looked up at him, a little apprehensive but misty with desire. A wave of longing swept through his body, and he ducked his head to caress her lips with his mouth.
He whispered against the tiny puff of breath from her mouth, “I’d scare you like this.”
Wine scented her breath like his, and he opened his mouth. He wanted to taste every part of her, to consume her until she was half-conscious from the release he’d give her.
Her hands slid up his back, a stroke that was friction on every inch of his skin.
He broke it off and lifted her chin to suck the skin over her pulse and then nip the fragile skin of her shoulder.
Arielle whispered, “Tell me what else you would do.”
He spun her back around and pressed her between the glass and his body again, her tits bulging against the glass and eliciting a little gasp from her. “Maybe you want me to take you this way. Maybe you grabbed my ass at the press conference today because you were trying to provoke me, because you’re an exhibitionist. Maybe you want me to strip your clothes off and take you against this window, naked, so that any one of the thousands and thousands of those people walking on the sidewalk down there could look up and see what you look like when I take you. They’d see my cock buried in you, pumping deep until you screamed when I made you come.”
Her face was mashed against the glass, but she whispered, “It’s mirror glass. They wouldn’t be able to see.”
He growled next to her ear, “Are you sure?”
Mitchell couldn’t decide if he was trying to call her bluff so she would leave or daring her to stay.
Or maybe he was just torturing himself.
Her eyes widened. “I think it’s mirror glass. Do you know?”
“Do you want to find out?”
She shook her head, a short, quick vibration.
He’d scared her a little.
Good. She shouldn’t play with him. He wasn’t a damn toy. “You want to know what it would be like with me?”
He backed off, jerked her backward, and then swept her feet out from under her and followed her down, his hand wrapped around the back of her head as they fell.
Mitchell ended up between her legs, her tight skirt riding up above her thighs.
He pulsed his hips, rubbing his erection against her panties, and she gasped in a good way. Her cheeks turned pinker, and her lips were swollen from him kissing her.
He said, “I’ll tell you what it would be like if we were together. I’d have you anytime I wanted. I’d take you face-down on the table after breakfast, screw you down on my cock and let you ride me like a cowgirl in the car on the way back from the convention center, and then wine and dine you until I took you to bed and made love to you with my hands, my mouth, and my body all night long. I’m not a quick screw, baby. I’m always in it for the long haul. You’d better give up your hobbies and television programs because your body would be my favorite way to pass the time. I’d have you walk around naked so I could take you any time I wanted or just grab you and give you an orgasm for my amusement. I’d want to know what toys did to you. I’d want to know how rough I could be. I’d push every boundary you have so I’d know all the ways I could have you and make you scream my name. Would you like that?”
She was blinking hard, but her arms tightened around his neck. Her eyes half-closed when he pulsed his pelvis, rubbing his dick against her pink lace panties he’d seen as she’d fallen to the floor.
God, he loved lace and silk and all those feminine things on a woman. They drove him out of his goddamn mind.
He grated out, “Answer me. I asked you if you would like it if I did those things to you. We’re supposed to know these things about each other, but I know you now. You’d like it when I followed you out of rooms at dinner parties, took you against a wall while I held my hand over your mouth, and then you had to sit through the rest of supper with a sore pussy, wouldn’t you, doll? You’d like it when you brought me coffee at my office in Connecticut, and I have you down on your knees and force my cock down your throat while you sucked me off under my big desk. You’d like feeling me squirm and gasp when I shot my load down your throat when my admin was right outside, and any one of the other guys might walk into my office and see me with my head thrown back and my hands in your hair. You’d like it when you went home to Arizona for the week and saw that asshole who didn’t value you like you deserve, and I’d left a red love bite on your neck that marked you as mine.”
Her breath was fluttering faster, her breasts pushing against his chest.
He kissed her again, tenting his arms around her head and kissing her like he wanted to take her, his body rolling over hers.
Her hands crept lower on his back, brushing over his trapezius muscles and lats toward his belt.
If she grabbed his ass again, he was going to pop that elastic dress off her body and have her. He hadn’t warned her so much as instructed her how to tell him what she wanted.
He broke off the kiss and glared into her eyes. “So, the question is, princess-mine, just how far are we going with this? How much do you want to know tonight?”
She was breathing hard under him, her limbs wrapped around his hips, If he’d been able to magic their clothes away, he could have buried himself in her.
When she began to wiggle, Mitchell pushed himself up on his hands because he sure as hell wasn’t going to hold her down, not unless she was into that and they’d talked it out beforehand, anyway.
With his broad shoulders and heavy pecs and arms, Mitchell was top-heavy, a result of long hours in the gym and his trainer’s slightly sadistic regimen. When Arielle cocked one knee and pushed up with one side of her hip, he tipped to the side and let himself go over because, again, he didn’t hold women down if they wanted to get up.
Unless, again, but that was different.
Arielle rolled with him and came up straddling him, and then she ducked her head and kissed him.
Oh, when her lips met his, he slipped his fingers into her silken hair and wound his other arm around her supple waist. Validation expanded inside his chest, thrilled that she wanted him as much as he wanted her, and he reached lower and palmed the gorgeous roundness of her ass, kneading her softness as she kissed him.
Arielle sat up, and with her hands splayed on his chest, she smirked at him.
Mitchell’s head was empty of thought. His lips were cold and numb from her absence.
She was laughing.
Why?
But wait—
No. Oh, no. No, no, no—
Arielle stood, her shapely legs planted on both sides of him.
Oh, surely she wasn’t going to—
Mitchell ran one hand up her ankle to her calf, made all the curvier by her ebony high-heeled shoes.
She lifted her leg away from his hand and flipped her foot as she stepped over him and walked away.
“Hey!” he called after her. “What the hell?”
Arielle called back over her shoulder. “Yeah, I think I know you a lot better now. Practicing was a good idea. It’s the one time we’re honest with each other, isn’t it? It’s all business and nothing else. It’s good we both know that, and we’re not lying to ourselves. See you tomorrow morning at the convention center.”
The door slammed behind her.
Mitchell was still lying spread-eagle on the carpeting next to the windows overlooking the Vegas Strip.
It was a good thing those windows were sturdy glass. If he could’ve rolled over the edge and plummeted to his death, he would’ve put himself out of his misery.
For he was, indeed, in misery.
High and dry.
Yep, that’s exactly what Mitchell was, high and dry. His dick was as high up as it would go, steel-hard and pointing at his navel inside his pants. And it was absolutely dry because it hadn’t been anywhere wet at all, not her pussy, or her mouth, or her ass.
So that’s what the cliché meant, high and dry.
Mitchell crawled to his feet and limped toward the bathroom, groaning.
Damn, Arielle had a mean streak.
He liked it.