I nursed a glass of champagne at the swank bar, enjoying the party atmosphere, sounds of the small orchestra, and people watched. Tre and I’d been at the opening gala for over an hour. I wore pink and yellow strappy high-heeled shoes, and Royalty had helped me choose the yellow strapless dress that flowed over my curves perfectly and stopped right above my knees. My hair had been straightened at a salon in New York and flowed down my back, and I wore a white gardenia tucked near my ear.
Tre coordinated with a black suit, a yellow tie, and handkerchief. While we both readied for the event in our suite earlier, he couldn’t tear his eyes off me when I’d turned around so he could zip me. He’d tried to convince me to slip in a quickie, but I didn’t want to sweat my hair out before I got a chance to make my official appearance as his woman. I smiled at how proud he’d been to introduce me around the ballroom and that I could chat politics with the best of them, despite my initial reservations about being his date for such an important event. Tre was now meeting with the mayoral team from Little Rock, and I’d wandered to the bar, giving him time to network.
A tall, ebony-skinned man with admittedly the prettiest white teeth I’d ever seen grabbed two champagne flutes as one of the waiters passed by the bar and handed one to me. “Try a fresh one.”
“Thank you.”
“I know a beautiful woman like yourself didn’t come to a gala like this alone?”
I took a sip of the sweet alcohol and answered drily, “You’re right, I didn’t. My date is somewhere around.”
He moved next to me, facing the bar while I remained perched on the bar stool, observing the formal gathering. “If you were with me, I would keep you by my side. You’re much too gorgeous to be left alone on a beautiful summer night like this.”
I continued to drink my champagne. “I’m my own good company.”
He grinned, looking me up and down, which would normally annoy me but somehow his admiring perusal of my body seemed more charming than lascivious. “I’m better company.”
“Not interested. As I said, I do have a date.”
“Who’s not here now? Besides, I’m simply striking up conversation at a boring-ass party. You’re much too pretty to be a mayor or be in politics, so what do you do?”
I quirked a perfectly arched brow. “I don’t know if I should be offended.”
The stranger chuckled. “Not at all. I’m all for beauty, brains, and power. I don’t see it often in reality, so if you are a politician, you already have my vote.”
“An artist, actually,” I answered, more because I didn’t have anything else to do than to keep conversation going. I agreed that the gala had been rather dull if you weren’t involved in the political world.
The handsome stranger’s smile spread, brightening his entire face. “I can see that. You might be dressed like the other women here, but your vibe is definitely different.”
I frowned slightly. “Different how? Like I don’t fit in?”
“No offense meant again.” He shrugged, placing his flute down. “You don’t and you don’t want to fit in with these stuffy, rich people, anyway.”
I gulped more of the champagne before my flute joined his on the bar. “Wish I could say I disagree.”
He touched my shoulder with his. “Where are you from? I hear an accent.”
“New Orleans.”
His dark brown eyes widened. “I thought so. I’m from New Orleans, too. Man…it’s a small world…name’s Devin.”
“It really is. Raini.” I finally returned his engaging and infectious smile, always glad to meet a fellow New Orleanian.
He leaned closer to me, almost like we were about to conspire. “I know everyone from New Orleans at this event, so who’s your date?”
“She’s with me.” Tre appeared out of nowhere, hand possessively on the curve of my hip, too close to my ass for my comfort at such a public and formal affair.
“I should have realized that she was here with you. You like to keep the beautiful ones all locked away to yourself.” Devin smiled, though it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Well, see that you stay with her. She’s been at this bar by herself for too long. I kept her company for you.”
“No need to do me any favors,” Tre retorted in a stilted voice. He took me by the elbow and guided me away from the bar and growled in my ear, “Stay away from him.”
When we were almost out of the ballroom, I tried to jerk away my elbow, but he held firm. “Let me go, Tre,” I muttered in an annoyed whisper.
“Not until we go upstairs.” He strode toward the exit, nodding to others with a determined look on his face.
“Are we leaving? It’s not that late. Why are you being this way? He didn’t mean anything. We were just talking.”
Tre charged ahead, practically dragging me, his strides so much longer than mine. Once he walked outside of the ballroom and there was no one else around, I yanked my arm from his clasp. “You can’t manhandle me because you’re mad, especially because I did nothing wrong. I can speak to whoever I want. You don’t own me.”
This time he gritted his teeth and took my hand, pulling me along. “Let’s go.”
I resisted, standing firm. “No. You’re being crazy about this. This night is too important for you to leave because you’re pissed about some man who barely said two words before you came over like we were doing something wrong.”
He got in my face. “You’re my woman and I fucking love you. Stay away from Devin Toussaint.”
His declaration of love topped any further protests. Did he really mean it? We’d been spending a lot of time together and then this trip, but we’d been dating for less than two months. Was it enough for him to love me? Or was he jealous that another man stepped to me?
We were now both silent, his hold still firm on my hand as the elevator opened, seemingly magically as soon as we approached. We were utterly alone, and the moment the doors closed his hands were on the nape of my neck, drawing me into him. “I told you I don’t share.”
“But I—” My protest was interrupted by his wild kiss.
His mouth, his tongue, his damn kisses set my body aflame, and I rubbed his back and slipped my hands in below his waistband to feel his taut ass. He moaned in my mouth when my hands reached for his buckle. Tre yanked up my dress, and cool air hit my thighs while his finger toyed with the lace fabric underneath. And when he began to tug down my panties, I breathlessly cautioned, “Wait…wait, Tre. Let’s wait until we get upstairs. There are cameras. You can’t possibly fuck me now?”
He lifted his head, eyes drowsy with anger and desire, his jaws clenched. His hand now cupped me, and I writhed against the pressure. “I want to stop this elevator so bad and remind you who you belong to. Cameras be damned.”
“They can see what you’re doing to me now.” I tried to move his hand, but instead he slipped one finger inside of me and licked my neck.
“My back is blocking you from the camera. I’m sure security is getting a little thrill, but only I can see the movements of your body, the sexy half-smile on your face as I finger fuck you.” His long finger went deep inside of me and I gasped in his mouth.
By the time we made it to our suite, we’d barely closed the door before he had my dress hitched over my thighs, his pants around his ankles, my panties to the side, as he bent me over the back of the sofa.
“I need to feel you, now.”
“I recently got on birth control so you still need to pull out.” I gladly held on to the sofa as he entered me forcefully from the back. His thickness filled me instantly, and I knew our coupling would be brief and satisfying at the first sensation of his naked, throbbing member in my heated sex. We’d never done it raw, skin to skin, and I doubt I could ever go back to placing any barriers between us after how much more acutely aware I became of the stimulating friction of his hard dick thrusting in and out of my wet pussy.
He pulled my tight bodice down enough to release my breasts, neither of us caring if he ripped the expensive fabric in the process. Tre tugged and kneaded both of my stiff nipples, almost to the point of pain while he buried himself deep within me. I didn’t know how much more of his brutal passion I could take, his undulating hips so wild, so fierce.
When he soon moaned the now familiar sounds of his pending climax, Tre grabbed my hair roughly as he fucked me harder and still harder, forever staking claim on my heart, body, and soul. I never wanted him to leave my body again, his savagery impossibly turning me on as my own lustful needs spiraled higher and higher. I swear the earth shattered while I screamed and clawed the sofa during the release of my sexual fervor, amazed that he’d had the strength and remembered to pull out to spread cum all over my ass.
I used the edge of the sofa to help me maintain my balance on trembling legs while Tre raised his pants and hurried to the bathroom to get a warm, soapy cloth to wipe me gently. He playfully popped my behind as he tugged my dress back down. “Now, we can go back.”
I couldn’t believe he had the energy to return to the party, while all I wanted to do was collapse into a deep slumber. “We’re going back?”
He kissed the tip of my nose. “Yes, I need to.”
“Then why leave the party early in the first place? We could have had sex later tonight. Now, I’m drained. After that performance, I’m not understanding why you don’t want to curl up in bed and sleep, too.”
Tre laced my hand with his and placed them against his heart. “I’ve been hard since earlier tonight when you walked out of this room looking so fucking sexy. You were beautiful and charming with everyone, and I couldn’t be prouder that you’re my woman. And then seeing Devin standing that close to you, grinning all in your face, did something to me. I got jealous and had to have you. If I wasn’t mayor, I would have had you in the elevator. And if our suite was in another hotel, I would have found a restroom. Regardless, you were going to get fucked thoroughly the moment I had a chance to remind you that you’re mine. Your touch, just who you are, energizes me.”
I shivered at the chill that went through me at his need for me. He pulled me close in his arms so my head rested on his still-heaving chest.
“You don’t have to be jealous. There’s nothing between me and Devin. I met him a few minutes before you walked up. There’s obviously bad blood between you. Who is he to you anyway?”
“You really don’t know who he is?” I shook my head and he continued, “That man was my opponent’s son. You remember, the man you voted for—his son. Devin Toussaint. I never cared for him even before the election. He and I have a grudge that goes far back to when we were both young on the scene in New Orleans politics. This isn’t the first time he tried to take what’s mine.”
I can’t believe I didn’t recognize the former first son, though I did think he looked familiar. “He may have been flirting, but I was only talking. You have no need to be threatened by him or any man.”
Tre inhaled deeply and exhaled and leaned back to gaze into my eyes. “I don’t know what it is about you that’s got me so crazy. I’ve never felt this way about any woman. Maybe because you gave yourself to me so willingly, or you bewitch me with your free spirit, the switch in your hips when you know I’m watching.” He teased. “I know that my life is now as bright as the colors you paint, ever since that morning in the bookstore. Let me say again, what I said in anger earlier, so you know without a doubt how I feel about you. I love you.”
I closed my eyes to stop the tears that he finally expressed what I’d always felt for him since we were teenagers, and opened them to see him staring at me, his eyes full of love.
“If you’re not ready to say it—”
“And I’ve been in love with you.” I cut him off and wrapped my arms around his neck. He lifted me high above him and kissed me on my way back down.
Tre held me tight. “I don’t want to go back to the party now.”
I smiled, touching his face, happier than I could ever recall being before. “Let’s not. You still have meetings tomorrow, so rub elbows with the right people then. It’s a boring party anyway. The planners needed a second-line band or a DJ.”
“This is the first time I actually thought one of these events was enjoyable.”
“Really? You can’t be a native of New Orleans and think that tonight was fun.”
His jaw tightened as we looked at each other. “I thought differently because you’re here with me. I meant it when I said that you bring me light, you make the dull seem sharp, the sour seem so sweet, and I could go on and on about how you make me feel. There’s nothing I’d rather do right now than be with you alone.”
“Then let’s go ride in that carriage in Central Park.” I took his hand and tugged him to the door.
“I love when you take the lead,” Tre remarked.