“So it’s a deal.”
She gulped, trying her best not to think about her mother. “Yeah, I guess it is. When do I—I mean, um, we—start?”
There was a moment of crackling silence. Then he answered, “Now.” And his lips came crashing down on hers.
CHAPTER 10
HE HADN’T EXPECTED HER TO SAY YES.
Of all the ways he had thought she might respond to his proposal, pitched half out of frustrated anger and half out of desperate need, the last one would have been yes.
But when he offered her one hundred times her current salary, she had gone quiet, so quiet, all he could hear were the last drips of water falling from the showerhead and the winter wind roaring outside the bathroom window. Then there was another sound, her shoes squeaking against the tile floor as she turned back to face him.
He braced himself then, thinking she’d say something derisive or maybe even slap him, but she’d hadn’t done either and though she hadn’t actually left the bathroom, her voice sounded faraway when she asked, “Are you serious?”
He had to hold on to himself very tightly, freeze himself to the spot in order to fight the impulse to close the space between them and take her into his arms. Just the hint that she might be open to sharing a bed with him….
But he realized what a fragile thing this possible agreement was, so though he got as close to her as possible, he kept himself from actually reaching out and touching her as he answered her next few questions. He forced himself not to laugh when she asked if he was sure he could afford it.
The truth was, not only could he afford it, he would have paid twice what he was offering if she had even hinted that was what it would take—that was how desperate he was to have her.
Part of him realized how weak this was, that he, Beau Prescott, one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL was offering a woman money to be with him. Not out of convenience, but because that was the only way he could have her.
But the other part of him didn’t give a damn. If money was the only way he could get Josie and end the torment of having her so close without being able to touch her, then that was what he’d do without hesitation or conscience.
Still, he must have had some pride left because when she said she was only willing to stay until spring, he shrugged it off, and said. “Fine. I plan to be back in L.A. by then anyway. Once I get my sight back…”
“You won’t have any need of me. You’ll go back to L.A. and your groupies, and everything will be back to just the way you like it,” she concluded.
His offer was more than that of bored rich guy, but he had no intention of letting her know about his ongoing obsession with her.
“When do I—I mean, um, we—start?”
A gentleman would have given her some time to adjust to the thought of becoming his paramour. Beau was no fucking gentleman.
“Now,” he practically growled, before doing what he had been dying to do since she came back into his life a week ago. Kiss her. Kiss her like the man he was now, in order to satisfy the boy he had been back then.
JOSIE WAS COMPLETELY TAKEN ABACK BY THAT KISS. From what she’d seen in the tabloids over the years, Beau had been with countless women, all prettier and way more famous than she was. She’d expected him to be all smooth swagger, to take her back to his bed in the next room and claim the girl who had sworn she’d never work for him with cocky disdain.
But there was nothing smug about the way he kissed her; it felt more like an attack than a cashed in chip. And his beard scraped against her skin as his mouth devoured hers with an almost desperate hunger. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he was actually attracted to her and not just looking for any warm body to share his bed.
“Josie, Josie…” he said, coming up for air, “…we need a bed.”
“A bed?” Josie repeated.
“Yeah, a bed, and since you’re always wanting to help me, I’m going to let you lead me to it.”
He stood there, waiting. Waiting, she realized, for her to make the next move, for her to lead him to the location that would seal her fate as a woman who would sleep with a man in exchange for money.
Quickly, she grabbed his hand and led him out of the bathroom and over to the bed.
Like ripping off a Band-Aid,
she thought to herself. It was better not to contemplate it too long, just do it.
She placed him right at the bed’s front edge and said, “You can sit down.”
“You sit down, too,” he said.
Her heart drummed in her chest as she took a seat at the far corner of the bed. But he said, “Closer.”
She moved infinitesimally closer.
“I felt the bed move a little bit. But I’m not sure you actually moved.”
“I did,” she assured him, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice.
“Now, Josie, a deal’s a deal. Don’t make me work for something I’m paying good money for.”
Guilt and shame roiled in her stomach, but nonetheless she forced herself to plop herself down right next to him. “No, I’d never want you to have to work hard for anything, Mr. Prescott,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
A shadow of a smile crossed over his face. “Now that’s the Josie I remember. Punishing you for that mouth of yours is going to be fun.”
He reached up and stroked the side of her face with a large palm, and she flinched. Just like that, her former sass disappeared. Wayne had always accused her of the same thing, telling her she deserved his punishments, because she couldn’t keep her mouth closed.
“Oh, hell, now you’re trembling,” he said.
She tried to stop, but found she couldn’t. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m trying not to.”
He gave her an irritated sigh. “Try harder. Look, I know I’m blind now, but imagine me the way I used to be. Back then just about every other woman in America would be paying for the chance to sleep with me. Literally. A few of my groupies even paid people off in order to get near me. I’d walk into my hotel room for an away game and it would be like, boom! Two, sometimes three or four naked girls on my bed. Surprise!”
She held herself as stiff as possible in order not to shake, her hands squeezed tight in her lap. “That must have been really nice for you.”
Beau sat there silent for seconds on end, and she began to wonder if he wasn’t about to call the whole thing off, having seen how poorly equipped she was to handle being somebody’s consort.
But then he said, “Why don’t you start by telling me what you’re wearing now.”
She looked down at her clothes. “A plaid shirt and some jeans.”
She expected an insult about her non-sexy wardrobe choices or worst, another story about his groupies. But he went still again, as if trying to hold himself back. “Unbutton the shirt.”
Tentatively, she began to do as he said.
“Are you doing it?” he asked.
“Yeah, I am,” she answered, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I tell you what,” Beau said. “Why don’t you give me my money’s worth and narrate what you’re doing while you’re doing it.”
“Narrate?”
“Like when I first came here and you wanted to talk me through everything you were doing like I was some kind of helpless invalid.”
Her eyes widened at his misinterpretation of her sincere actions. “I wasn’t trying to treat you like you were helpless, I was just trying to—”
He cut her off with a long, slow shake of his head. “Last I checked, I wasn’t paying you to argue with me. You’re so big on calling me Mr. Prescott these days, from now on when I make a request, all I want to hear from you is, ‘Whatever you say, Mr. Prescott.’”
Was he serious? She clamped her lips together to keep back an angry reply.
“Whatever you say, Mr. Prescott.” she finally answered after a brief wrestling match with her pride. Then she began narrating in a monotone between clenched teeth. “Right now I’m unbuttoning my shirt. Three more buttons to go. One . . . two . . . three. . .”
“Take the shirt all the way off.”
She began to do as he said.
“I don’t hear you narrating.”
“I’m pulling one arm out and now the other.” Her cheeks flamed. “And now I’m sitting here in my bra.” She didn’t add, “feeling real self-conscious.”
“Details, details,” he said.
It took her a moment to understand what he was getting at. “You want me to tell you what the bra looks like?”
He half-smirked at her. “I want you to do your job. You wouldn’t lead me up the stairs without telling how many of them there were, would you?”
“It’s nothing special,” she said. “Just two triangles of cotton.”
“Take it off.”
“I’m taking it off,” she said. “Now I’m sitting here naked from the waist up.”
“Draw me a picture of what that looks like.”
Embarrassment swirled inside her stomach as she answered, “I’m all-right looking, I guess. I mean, I’m not big-chested like most of your girlfriends.”
“How do you know what my girlfriends look like?” he asked. “You been checking up on me, Josie Witherspoon?”
Yes. When she’d still been living in Atlanta, she had flipped through a few celebrity magazines in the supermarket to see if he was in them. But out loud she said, “You seem like the kind of guy who’d prefer a chest over substance.”
“Don’t go discriminating, now,” Beau said, his Alabama drawl in full effect. “You can’t judge a girl’s brains by her boobies.”
He suddenly covered her breasts with his large hands. And she gasped when she discovered that despite his trust fund background, his hands were rough and callused, probably from years of throwing footballs.
She also gasped because of what the fingers on his right hand were touching. A short thin puckered line. “What’s this?” he asked.
“A scar,” she answered.
“How did you get it?”
“It’s a long, stupid, mood-killing story.”
Not a lie, but not exactly a truth either. She waited with baited breath to see if he’d question her further.
“It feels like you got more than a handful, which is enough for me.” To her great relief, he moved on from the scar, caressing the undersides of her breasts while his rough thumbs worked her nipples.
Soon the tension of the scar conversation was replaced by something else. A delicious thread of desire licked down her stomach, and when she looked down, her nipples were standing at attention. He dipped his head and pulled one into his mouth, and the warm, wet sensation made her forget the previous conversation all together as her lips parted on a moan.
He gave her engorged nipple a few long, lazy tugs before he said, “Tell me how this is making you feel.”
“Nice,” she said.
He stroked her nipple with his tongue again. “Just nice?”
“Good,” she added. Then she moaned when he drew her breast into his mouth and sucked on her nipple quite a bit harder. “Really good. You’re sucking on my nipple, but I can feel it down there, too.”
“Down there? Tell me where. Exactly.”
Embarrassment flooded her otherwise aroused senses. “You know where, Mr. Prescott.”
“I know I know where, but I want you to tell me.”
“Down below, inside my kit kat.”
She felt silly using such a childish word, for not being the grown woman an exchange should require her to be. But she didn’t have a lot of experience with being sexy.
Wayne had preferred for her to lie there, quiet and docile, while he moved on top of her. He’d never asked that she actively participate in their lovemaking, especially not like this.
She expected Beau to tease her about not using the right words, for not talking sexy like his hotel room groupies, but instead he said, “Take off the rest of your clothes and lay back on the bed.”
She did as he asked, but once she was lying down, she had to fight the urge to cover her chest and womanhood with her arms and hands even though she knew he couldn’t see her, that’s how self-conscious this made her.
You’re just an object to him
, she reminded herself.
A warm body. He doesn’t care what you look like.
But what he did next was even more intimate than looking at her. He climbed up on the bed, still fully clothed, and lay down beside her.
“Turn toward me,” he said. Then he started touching her.
First her hair. “It’s not straight anymore, and it’s shorter,” he said, feeling the asymmetrical wedge of riotous curls at the top of her head. His hands then found the shaved sides. “Much shorter.”
She waited for him to state his displeasure with the cut Mindy had labeled drastic.
“I like it,” Beau said. “That weave you were wearing before didn’t look like the real you.”
She wondered how he could think he knew anything about the real her, but then his hands made contact with her glasses. “Are these…?”
He smiled like a little boy on Christmas. “You’re still wearing the cat-eye glasses I bought you?”
“I ran out of contact lenses,” she said defensively. “And I haven’t had time to get a new pair of—”
He kissed her again, hot and strong, his tongue delving into her mouth like a proprietary claim. And once again her kit kat responded, swelling hot and bothered, just because Beau Prescott was kissing her.
One hand cupped her nape and the other continued his exploration, moving from her neck down to her chest, where he again revved up her nipple, torturing it under his thumb until she was squirming.
“Mr. Prescott…” she said, helpless with need.
“Hold on, darlin’. I’ll get to that part of you soon enough.”
Then his hand was moving down again, and she tensed but he stopped when he got to her ribcage.
“You’ve lost weight. A lot of weight.”
She would have thought that would have pleased him as many skinny starlets as she’d seen him out with, but he was frowning.
“Yes,” she said, searching for some credible explanation for actually being almost twenty pounds lighter than she’d been in high school. “I’m not sick or anything, I just lost weight because…” …because of her previous all-soup diet, because of her recovery from being married to Wayne… but in the end she said, “…because Loretta’s not feeding me anymore.”
He didn’t laugh at her joke. “I want you to gain some weight,” he said. “That’s an order.”