James: A College Girl Romance (10 page)

I nearly died when I took a bite of the grilled cheese. This was
definitely
how the other half lived. When I was done eating, I just wandered around, marveling at the suite until it was time for my appointment. I took the keycard James had left for me and went out in search of the spa.

T
he meeting dragged. I couldn’t concentrate, and I wasn’t deluding myself about why. This girl was a distraction, and generally speaking, this was why I kept my liaisons short-term. Cass Flynn, though, was too much fun.

For better or worse, I was supposed to bring the party wherever I happened to be. Today I wasn’t feeling it. I glad-handed the clients and made promises for good times to come as Chris Hanover glowered at me. My partner was the tech geek to my salesman. Four years younger than I was, Chris had been a freshman in undergrad my senior year. He was a blond pretty boy like Bennett, but built like a rugby player. Oddly enough, he had the mind of a brilliant engineer. He just didn’t have a fucking clue about business.

His tech, though, was the reason my stock options were worth what they were—and I was the reason he hadn’t been eaten alive as just another kid with great ideas for someone else to steal. I had gotten him backers and made sure he didn’t fuck up; he had made me a partner. Three years ago, I’d had a trust fund and a colossal inheritance. But after Hanover Tech had gone public two years ago, Chris and I had crossed the threshold into revoltingly wealthy.

To celebrate, I had purchased an island in the Maldives. I still hadn’t been there, but it was on my list.

As far as the business, I was responsible for the strategy and people part, but today I wasn’t pulling my weight, and I knew it. I walked the clients out of the boardroom before rejoining Chris. I threw my jacket across one of the chairs and began loosening my tie and unbuttoning my collar.

“The fuck’s wrong with you, McDevitt?”

I shook my head and scrubbed a hand over my face.

“Not a thing.”

He smirked and put his feet up on the immaculately shiny table.

“Fuck you. Remember? I don’t buy into the McDevitt charm.”

I smiled thinly.

“Don’t knock the McDevitt charm, friend. It’s the reason you’re here and not working for chump change in some asshole’s IT department.”

“Ouch. What the fuck crawled up your ass?”

“A twenty-three-year-old stripper—cocktail waitress, actually. Redheaded siren.”

He jumped off the boardroom table.

“Are you fucken serious, dude?”

I shoved my hands into my pockets and looked out over San Francisco’s business district. When I nodded, Chris howled with laughter. Fuck me. I was not used to this bullshit. I had always been the one giving my friends and colleagues shit for being melodramatic, moody fuckwads about women.

“Is
that
why you begged out of everything for the next week?” he asked disbelievingly.

“Call it a vacation.”

Chris shook his head.

“Mayhem McDevitt taking a vacation? Instead of taking a tour de strip clubs across the city?”

My hands clenched and unclenched in my pockets. I was really starting to hate that fucking moniker. Sure, in undergrad, I had deserved it. Oh, fuck it. I had deserved it last week. In addition to being called a bastard, I had been accused—on a number of occasions—of never growing up. Peter fucking Pan, if you will.

“So? Why aren’t we at her show? I want to check out this nubile piece of ass who’s got your panties in a twist.”

I turned around.

“Fuck off, Hanover. I said cocktail waitress, not stripper.”

I grinned wolfishly to soften the menace in my voice.

“Is she
that
good of a lay?”

When I didn’t say anything, he stared at me with a dumbfounded expression.

“You are fucking her, right?”

My knuckles cracked. Jesus. Hindsight hit me like a blow to the solar plexus. I could see now why Bennett had sucker punched me that day at his house.

… I could try her out and report back if that would help you make up your mind.

My words. Damn, I had been an asshole. Because I had always assumed that those who knew me best—no one truly knew me well—wouldn’t take anything I said too seriously. Now it made sense to me why Ryan Bennett hadn’t spoken to me after the shit I had pulled. It was bro’s before ho’s … until it wasn’t.

“Don’t expect to hear from me until next week,” I leered as I picked up my jacket and started walking toward the elevators.

“Right, buddy. Since when has one chick been able to keep your attention for more than five minutes? And that’s being generous.”

“Asshole,” I called over my shoulder as I pressed the button for the elevator.

I had to wonder, though:
When the fuck had I turned into such a sensitive bitch?
On the way back to the hotel, I called the concierge and left instructions with him to prepare the suite for after dinner. I told myself that everything I was doing was an elaborate game to get Cass Flynn into bed, and maybe it was—but I was beginning to lose sight of what I really wanted. What I wanted was usually simple, but Cassia Flynn was anything but simple.

What she didn’t know was that I had scheduled a couple’s massage, and she was registered at the front desk as my wife. The irony of checking in as a married couple was not lost on me. I stopped by the room and dropped off my jacket before walking to the spa. When I arrived at the front desk, the receptionist looked up at me with a worried expression.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. McDevitt. Your wife is nearly finished with her massage.”

I smiled disarmingly.

“Not a problem. I’ll just slip in and surprise her.”

After I signed the bill and tipped out the spa staff, the woman at the desk helpfully pointed to the door. The masseuse was just on her way out as I stepped inside. I touched a finger to my lips with one hand and held up the white rose with the other, gesturing toward Cass, whose red hair was cascading over the massage table’s head cradle. As I folded back the soft flannel sheet covering her back, she flinched before laughing nervously.

“Sorry! I thought the massage was over.”

I laid the rose on the counter and then took out my cufflinks and dropped them in a pocket before rolling up my sleeves. Her skin was shimmering with oil, and my hands easily slid down her back all the way to the edge of her round, firm little ass. She moaned softly, and my dick jerked. This was definitely a first for me. Beautiful, naked woman laid out in front of me, and I wasn’t going to fuck her in the right here, right now.

“Wow. You have really strong hands,” Cass mumbled. “I guess I should have said harder in the first place.”

And it was official—my hard-on was painful again. My hands skimmed up her sides before running back down to her ass. Her skin was like silk. I worked the muscles right at the curve of her ass before moving toward her hips. I ran my hands down her thighs next, working my way to her calves before sliding my hands up along the creamy skin of her inner thighs until I could feel the heat of her pussy.

She inhaled sharply and became very still, but she didn’t say anything. Smiling to myself, I moved back down to her calves, kneading the muscles until she whimpered. When I took the rose and began to caress the skin of her neck with the petals, she shivered. Aching as I imagined slipping into that tight heat from behind and feeling her silky pussy wrap around my dick, I bent down next to her.

“Did you enjoy your massage?”

She bolted upright, causing the sheet to fall around her hips. My eyes locked onto her creamy little tits, her nipples standing out, beckoning. Her eyes followed my gaze, and she yelped before grasping the sheet and dragging it up around her chest. With a smirk, I walked over and took the robe from the hook on the wall.

“How did you get in here?” she whispered fiercely.

“You’re registered at the hotel as my wife.”

“Oh my god,” she muttered.

I handed her the robe.

“Are you going to turn around?”

“I would prefer not to.”

“Are you always this difficult?” she huffed.

“I’m extremely accommodating in bed.”

She laughed and rolled her eyes before I faced the wall. When I turned around, she was wrapped in the robe and wearing the spa’s slippers.

“Are you ready?” I asked.

She looked around nervously.

“I have to go get my clothes and change.”

“Give me the key to the locker. I’ll have your things sent up.”

After a brief hesitation, she followed me to the door. I handed her the rose, which earned me a withering look. I walked ahead of her to the elevator, pressed the button, and then held out my hand when the doors slid open. Already standing on the elevator was a jowly middle-aged man wearing khakis, a blue polo, tassels on his shoes, and too much gold jewelry.

His eyes slithered across Cass’s body. He was easily four times her age—and something about his gaze triggered a memory of my father’s predatory stare. As the elevator began moving, Cass looked over at him, her cheeks coloring as his eyes raked over her. For a brief moment, I entertained a fantasy of grabbing his bad comb-over and smacking his head into the steel doors of the elevator. When he stepped off at the next floor, my muscles relaxed. This girl was definitely my grand karmic bitch slap.

Jealousy? Possessiveness? What the fuck? I was old enough to know better. What was it about her? Sure, I wanted to fuck her. In undergrad, my motto had been, “
No pussy left behind.
” Maybe I was getting old. Hell, in the past three years, I had seen half the guys I knew get married—happily or not. I was that guy they all said they envied.

Mayhem McDevitt
, the eternal bachelor.

The type of man Cass Flynn looked at with scorn, mild amusement, lust, and trepidation. Sure, her willpower would break down, and I would fuck her into a stupor. Then she would look back and see what? The best fuck of her life? An empty moment of weakness? I shook my head as the elevator stopped.
Fuck this introspection shit
. I opened the door to the suite and gestured for her to go ahead of me.

“Dinner is at eight,” I said as I took off my tie and began unbuttoning my shirt. Her eyes widened, and it didn’t escape my notice when she nervously licked her upper lip. “I’m going for a run. Then I’ll be in the gym.”

She stood frozen as I stripped off my shirt. The moment my hand dropped to my pants, she bolted for the bathroom. A few minutes later, I left the suite feeling like a goddamned hard-up teenager. I needed to burn off some of this energy.

Logic dictated that I should have been rethinking this entire arrangement and having Irving run a background check on the first stripper who came into view. But if I was anything at all, I was a stubborn son of a bitch.

Perhaps if I’d had a fully functioning conscience, I would have backed off by now, but
morally compromised
was pretty much a perpetual state of being, which made me more like my father than I wanted to admit. It was only my general disgust for him that kept me from truly becoming someone I couldn’t face in the mirror.

Cass Flynn had said it herself: I wasn’t coercing her; I was simply waiting for her to give in.

In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves ... self-discipline with all of them came first.
Harry S. Truman said that.

Victory belongs to the most persevering.
Napoleon.

If anything, I was unrelenting.

I started jogging at the Ferry Building and then ran along the Embarcadero, pushing hard until my lungs were on fire. Good enough. I jogged back, and when I reached the lobby, the woman behind the desk—blonde, five-nine—smiled at me. I recognized the look, but that was definitely a breach of rule number five:
never mix business with pleasure
. If I indulged in the habit of fucking the staff at a hotel I frequented on a regular basis, it would complicate things.

Strip clubs were another matter entirely. In hooking up with a stripper, there was an understanding. No desperate “
Call me!
” the morning after. No needy “
When will I see you again?
” as my pants were being zipped. If I were to fuck a front desk staff member? It would come with the expectation for more, which was something I didn’t want or need.

Cass didn’t fit into either category. She was, in point of fact, the exact opposite of any woman I had pursued. Innocent, but not naïve. Strong-willed, but shy. Sharp-tongued, but easily shocked.

I smiled blandly at the woman as I made my way to the elevator. The workout facility was modest, but empty. I didn’t need most of the equipment, though a pull-up bar would have been nice. Push-ups. Rows. Deadlifts. More push-ups to keep myself from thinking of how long it had been since I had enjoyed a good fuck.

When I got back to the suite, I opened the door, pulled off my shirt, and crossed the room just in time to see Cass holding up a black corset in front of the full-length mirror in the second bedroom. She was clad only in a pair of lacy black boy shorts that left a delicious portion of her ass visible. Unaware of my entrance, she was studying the corset with a look of consternation, bordering on anger.