No Strings Attached (The Escort #1) (14 page)

Jagger pulled me in closer, nestled between my thighs, all that body heat setting me on fire. He led me down on the table, and I pushed a bowl out of the way. “Put the dishes in the sink,” I whispered against his cheek. I was not spending the rest of this night scrubbing stew off the floor.

He didn’t move. “Shouldn’t we go upstairs?”

“Shit.” I maneuvered away from him, sitting up and sliding off the table. I cleared the dishes, pushing my sweater back down over my bra. All of my wanting to be the cool mom whose daughter could talk to her about anything was a great concept until she came downstairs and caught me fucking Jagger on the kitchen table. Then it would be a nightmare. “Maybe we should’ve gotten a hotel room.”

Jagger came up behind me at the sink, wrapping his arms around my waist. His hands were warm under my sweater and we didn’t have much time to get upstairs. I hadn’t planned anything for dessert but me and he was ready to indulge, his lips moving against my neck. “Leah. Stop being so hard on yourself. We’re both dealing with a lot of firsts here.” His eyes flicked toward the staircase. “You’re going to make mistakes and I’m going to make mistakes. All we can do is try.” He kissed my head and some of the tension melted away. Not all of it, though. And I didn’t think it would as long as we were sneaking around on Raven. “Nobody expects you to be perfect.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Leah

“
You Have Quite An Effect On Women
.” I tapped Jagger’s leg under the table. He surprised me and caught my foot, running his hand up the inside of my thigh. I covered my squeal with a sip of sangria. Everyone in the restaurant didn’t need to know what we were up to. “I can’t believe Raven actually came out with us today.”

“I’m glad she did.” Jagger raised an eyebrow and didn’t let up on his attack on my thigh. His fingers swirled along the seam of the denim, bumping against my lady parts. I squirmed, torn between getting away from him and giving in. This drink was going down fast and all bets were off. “She’s a cool kid.”

“How did you get her to open up like that?” Raven and Jagger had talked about video games, music, and TV shows as we spent the afternoon exploring the Smithsonian. Most of the time I had no idea what the hell they were talking about, but I loved it. Watching someone draw her out of her shell, I got to know Raven today, too. “I think she said more to you today than she has to me since we moved here.”

“I didn’t make any assumptions about her.” Jagger let go of my leg and instead took my hand. “I asked questions and let her lead. Everyone loves to talk about what turns them on.”

Alcohol churned in my stomach at the thought of Raven being turned on by anything the way I was by Jagger’s finger scraping the inside of my palm, but I knew what he meant. “You have to do that, get people talking, when you’re at work.”

I had to stop making assumptions and let Jagger tell me about the part of him that scared me the most.

“I have to make people feel comfortable with me immediately. If I assumed that every client wanted the same things, I’d piss a lot of people off, and I wouldn’t be very good at what I do. All people want is to be heard and to be seen for who they really are.”

“You’re really smart.” I squeezed his hand and smiled at him. “What do you want, Jagger?”

He looked down at our hands before he answered me and let go when the waitress came. Usually he didn’t care if the waitress caught him completely unraveling me, but this time he was the one who was coming undone.

“You’re really going to just eat a salad?” I asked, trying to lighten the mood.

“I don’t eat a lot of carbs,” he said softly. He wasn’t going to starve to death; the plate was overflowing with crab, avocado, and a bunch of other yummy stuff. Next to my crab cake sandwich, it held its own.

“Yeah. I guess you don’t get a body like that by eating French fries.” I wiggled my eyebrows and took a bite of mine as punctuation. “I just did what you said not to do. And I didn’t let you answer the question.”

“You asked me what I want? One of those.” He snatched a fry from my plate and grinned, but the sadness was back. “I want the same thing that everyone else does. I want to spend every day creating a world that makes me happy and to find someone to share it with.”

“But you said you don’t date.” I took a bite of my sandwich. He didn’t answer me. “Why not?”

The question really should’ve been
why me?
But then this would’ve been about me, not him.

“I meet a lot of women.” I looked back down to my plate, squirming in my seat for a whole different reason. “I know that makes you uncomfortable, and you’re not different than anyone else in that respect.” My mouth fell open. “Let me finish. People hire me because they need something. I’m there to fulfill that need. It’s like any other job. I provide a service that people are looking for. It’s not about me. It’s about the experience that I can provide for them.”

“So you’re not alone, but you’re lonely.”

He nodded and stabbed at his lettuce.

I took a deep breath. “What did I do differently?”

Finally, he smiled. Like me, he was happiest when the focus wasn’t on him. “The two of us aren’t that different. You like to make people happy. They tell you what they need and you transform their house into a home. You might think it’s just decoration and furniture, but you know how to get inside people too, Leah. You make them relax and they tell you the things closest to them. You take that and make their lives better.”

“I can do that professionally.” I bit my lip. “But I drive everyone away from me personally.”

He sighed. “Me too.”

We didn’t talk much for the rest of the dinner. We were headed to a place too raw for public display. There didn’t need to be an audience when the walls totally crumbled. The restaurant was just a couple of blocks from my house. We walked back to the house hand in hand in a wine-hazed snow globe.

“I’m scared, Jagger,” I said once we were back out in the cold. I tugged on his hand so he turned to face me. He opened his mouth slightly, wanting to tell me I had nothing to be afraid of. He tipped my chin up so I met his eyes, and I knew he couldn’t even convince himself of that. Instead he kissed me, slow and still hungry. He made the chill go away.

We were both rattled, but the city moved all around us as it always had. “I’m scared that everything about us was perfect because it wasn’t meant to last. I hired you, specifically you, because I wanted a fantasy. I wanted to pretend everything that I’d fucked up in my life didn’t exist, even if it was just for a weekend. But now I’ve brought you into that and I’m worried that it’s going to bite us both in the ass.”

Jagger was so still. Thank God he was holding on to me because my knees threatened to give out. “I knew what I was getting myself into,” he finally said. “You’ve been honest with me about who you are the whole time. You wanted to show the people at the reunion a different side of you, but to do that, you had to show me Leah.”

“Have you ever thought about becoming a therapist?” I laughed cautiously. “I’ve given a few of them a lot of money. Not one has been able to break it down so I can see things clearly like you just did.”

He shook his head, smiling. “Don’t be afraid to let people really see you.” He kissed my forehead. “I promise they’ll like what they see.”

We started walking again. The cold broke right through my jacket. “You’re doing the same thing I do, you know.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

“You’re putting on a show because you’re afraid to let people see the real you.” I squeezed his hand as we walked up my front stairs. I turned around on the top step before I opened the door so he had to look up at me. All bundled up with my black knit hat and matching scarf wrapped around his motorcycle jacket. He looked much younger this way, like he had when he’d been joking with Raven. “I like what I see, Jagger. A lot.”

“You hate my job.” He closed the door behind him. The house was dark, and only faint noises came from upstairs. “Can you live with that part of me, Leah?”

“I don’t know.” I led him upstairs, stripping him down to his jeans before I answered him. “Make me understand. Because I’m making assumptions. And they’re not good.”

He sighed, tugging gently at my scarf when I sat down in front of him. “I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if don’t with this. If I tell you I feel nothing when I’m out with my clients, you’re going to think I’m lying to you. Either that I’m lying about the way that I feel about you, or the way that I feel about them.” He closed his eyes for a long blink, the scarf still in his hands. “I almost said no when Kari booked me for you. In fact, I did say no. Because it was too much hassle for the same result.”

“Then why do you do it?” I pulled my sweater up over my head and started wriggling out of my jeans. Jagger understood seduction. If he couldn’t open up to me with words, his body couldn’t lie to me. At least, that’s what I convinced myself. “You never say anything good about your job.”

He licked his lips as I slid my jeans down over my thighs, but I kept my bra and underwear on. I’d never be totally confident taking off my clothes in front of an audience. All I saw was stretch marks and cellulite, but the hungry look in Jagger’s eyes made me forget about it every time. He saw something completely different than I did. “I locked myself into a lifestyle that doesn’t make sense without being an escort. I’m not good at anything else.”

“That’s not true.”

“You didn’t let me finish.” He smirked. “There’s a gallery space in Wynwood for rent. I want it, Leah.”

My eyes lit up. Not because he wanted to do something else besides escort, because he actually believed in his art. “I like the way this sounds. Tell me more.”

“Don’t get too excited. The money would only support its existence. I’d still have to work. There’s no profit in that sort of stuff. It’s a place where people’s ideas can be seen. Not just mine.”

“I want
you
to get excited about something. The only time your eyes light up is when you talk about your photography. It’s okay for you to want this.” I leaned over and pressed my lips against his. “Even if you had to subject yourself to me to get it.”

“It was the best thing I ever did.” That light I was talking about returned to his eyes. “For obvious reasons, but it had been a long time since I pushed myself. You made me want to be better.”

“We’re talking about photography again.” I leaned back on the bed and hugged a pillow to my chest. “I need to know about the part of you that scares me.”

He lay down next to me and drew his eyebrows together. “What do you want to know?”

“How it’s different.” I swallowed hard. “With me. Or with them. However it’s easiest for you to explain it. Don’t try to spare my feelings. I’m a woman. We’re not good at separating sex and love.”

Jagger laughed. “Sex and satisfaction go hand in hand. Love is spiritual. A lot of my clients are married, but they’re like us, showing the world what they think it wants to see. They can’t talk to their husbands or they feel bad or dirty about what they really want. Instead, they hire me because there’s no risk involved. They get to act out on whatever they need and then they go back to their lives.”

“I can sympathize with that.” I rolled over on my back and looked up at the ceiling. “If I asked Rich to try something or did anything different, he’d accuse me of cheating on him. It always turned into a fight.”

“Those women don’t see me as a person, all they see is the act. Whatever it is that they can’t have.” Jagger pulled a curl away from my hair and rubbed it between his fingers. “That’s how you were different. You needed something else.”

He was trying to turn this around on me again, and I wasn’t going to let him. “Have you ever felt anything for your clients before?”

“No.” Our eyes locked. “There are things I do to protect myself.”

“Like what?”

“No kissing, and no working off the clock.”

“You kissed me right away.” Damn, and I thought he was good at it because he did it all the time. The opposite was true. It was amazing because he’d been holding back. “I’m not complaining, of course. Why did you break your rules for me so quickly?”

Jagger smiled and looked up at the ceiling like he was watching a replay of our first night together. It had been on repeat in my mind for weeks. “Because you needed to be kissed.”

“Okay, Rhett Butler,” I laughed. “That’s one of my favorite movies, by the way. Gone With the Wind.”

“I’m not surprised.” He turned back to me. “You made me want to break my rules, Leah. I realized I wasn’t satisfied.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Jagger

“
Have You Ever Been In Love
?” Leah rolled over, her gaze raking over my body. Studying me, but no judgment.

“No.” The word left a metallic aftertaste on my tongue.

“It’s okay.” She bit her lip. “Apparently neither have I. I thought I was, but to be actually
in love
, someone has to be there with you, down in the trenches, giving it as good as they get it. I’ve never had that.”

I pulled her bottom lip away from her teeth gently. Leah held her breath, waiting for my next move. Smoothing away the hair that fell in her face, I leaned in and kissed her. Leah’s lips were soft, sweet, and addicting. When she asked me why I broke my rule for her, it was because I needed to kiss her as badly as she needed to be kissed. I’d known it right away. I wanted absolutely all of her, and I was willing to do everything it took to get it.

“I love it when you kiss me.” She sighed against my cheek. “You do it without any ulterior motives. You just want to kiss.”

“Kissing is more intimate than sex, for me at least.” Leah nestled against my body and I had to catch my breath. “It’s pretty easy to get someone off.”

Leah laughed softly. “Not for everyone.”

“If you know what you’re doing.” I brushed against the bare skin at the small of her back. She was on fire. “But with kissing, you’re totally stripped down, breathing with someone else. It’s the most primal, intimate thing you can do with someone. It’s an unspoken language; the purest expression of actual affection for another person. You can’t fake that connection. Souls don’t lie to one another.”

“Kiss me again,” she whispered.

“Absolutely.” I stopped before my lips touched hers. Leah’s breathing changed, fast and shallow, expectant. She was so fucking beautiful. I nipped at her softly, letting her chase me for what seemed like an eternity. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I pressed her flat onto the bed and claimed her mouth. Leah melted underneath me. She moaned against my lips, the sound vibrating through my body. My cock threatened to rip through my jeans. Leah’s hands fumbled against my stomach, too shaky to get the job done. Instead she stroked my shaft through the denim.

My head flew back. “God,” I cried out.

“Shh.” Leah pulled me back to her by my hair. “Raven.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You want me to be quiet?”

She grinned, her lips swollen from the kiss. “I kind of insist on it.”

“And you want me to fuck you?”

“I kind of insist on that, too.”

“Hmm.” I rolled up off of her, taking in every glorious curve. Leah had me totally scrambled. The assertiveness mixed with the complete surrender. She was so quickly becoming my shelter, but she needed the same things from me. And I thought I had no limits. It wasn’t one of those times that we stopped and discussed our hard limits and safewords because we’d already crossed that line. She’d tattooed herself on my soul.

Leah watched me, blinking slowly. We’d brought each other to the same place and now neither of us knew what to do.

“Unzip my jeans,” I instructed, my voice low so she wouldn’t hear it shaking. Leah sat up, shaking her head like she’d just woken up. Curls fell around her face, her gaze was fixed on me. She held me spellbound as she did as she was asked. I slid down on the bed, letting her strip me bare, her eyes never leaving mine. Even as she lowered her mouth to my cock.

She licked the wet tip, smiling at me before she sunk down, taking me into her mouth. Her gag reflex was strong, but it didn’t matter that she couldn’t go all the way. What she did with her hand was just as good. Licking, pumping, sucking, the rhythm made me dizzy. I lay back on the bed, clutching the bedspread in my fingers, twisting it, doing anything to keep quiet. It was torture, but I never wanted her to stop. I bucked my hips up, meeting her lips with my own thrusts in a test of wills--which one of us would break the vow of silence first.

Leah broke first, her head falling on my thigh to stifle her moan. Her hand kept working my shaft and my body was going haywire under her touch. Stripped down to absolutely nothing, we locked eyes again until we caught our breath. She brought her mouth to my balls, one stroke of her tongue taking me right over the edge. I erupted, Leah coaxing my release with long, slow strokes. I twisted my head into my shoulder. I’d draw blood before I screamed.

She cleaned every inch of me, slow delicate strokes of her tongue setting me on fire.

And someone considered this woman a throwaway. Unbelievable.

Once my bones knitted themselves back together, I got up without a word and went into the bathroom. A sheen of sweat coated my skin. Splashing cold water on my face did nothing to cool me down. I didn’t recognize the man who looked back at me in the mirror. Eyes wild, out of breath, nothing to hide.

I liked what I saw.

Last night I noticed a neglected bottle of massage oil in Leah’s medicine cabinet when I was looking for toothpaste. Rinsing the dust off the bottle, I opened it, making sure it wasn’t as awful as it looked. Caramel was a stretch, it was more sugar and chemicals, but mixed with Leah, I could handle it.

Leah had returned to the head of the bed, blending in with the pillows. Her eyes snapped open when I came back in the room, but words were heavy between us tonight.

I curled my foot under me on the edge of the bed. “Take off your bra,” I said. A slow smile spread over her face as she rose up from the bed and reached around to her back, freeing her tits from the lace. They fell, heavy, and swayed as she handed me the bra. I couldn’t take my eyes away from her nipples, slightly upturned, pink, and already pebbled. I loved real tits. The way the felt, the way they reacted to any touch. There were some things that couldn’t be faked. Leah circled her nipple gently, scraping her fingernail over the skin. Goosebumps broke out over her body.

“Lay down on your stomach,” I told her. She shook her head, the spell she’d cast over herself broken.

“You’re bossy tonight.” Her eyes were alight when she shot me a glance over her shoulder as she settled.

“Do you like it?” I opened the bottle. I already knew the answer.

“I do.” She sighed making herself comfortable. “It’s nice not to have to make all the decisions. I can just relax and enjoy whatever you do.” I rubbed the sticky liquid between my fingers. This was some cheap shit, but it would do the trick. Leah cringed when I touched her. “What
are
you doing?”

“It’s massage oil.” My hands were frozen on her back, the caramel goo oozing out from beneath my fingers. “It was right next to the toothpaste.”

Leah’s body shook with laughter. “Oh my God,” she said when she picked her head up. “I can’t believe you found that.”

“I can tell it’s been hanging around for a while.” I ran my hands along the length of her back in one long stroke, then circled my thumbs at the base of her spine. Leah melted into the mattress, purring on contact. I knew this was a good idea. “I figured if you kept it, you wanted to use it.”

“Right after I got divorced, my old boss had a sex toy party. I think she did it to cheer me up, honestly. Kari got me loaded and made me buy a bunch of crap. Including that disco ball dildo you liked so much.”

I kept working Leah’s muscles, no surprise they were knotted up around her neck. Barry had insisted I learn massage when I first started working for him, probably so he had some claim to a legit business. “I forgot about that.” Bullshit.

She turned toward me. “Did you?” She narrowed her eyes, catching me in my lie. “Because I can remind you if you’d like.”

“I would like that.” Hooking my sticky fingers into her panties, I slid them down her legs. Leah parted her legs slightly in invitation. The littlest things were what made me fall apart. It took everything I had to keep the massage going, running my hands back up and down her legs. Which each stroke, she opened wider. When I reached her apex I stroked her folds, not needing any massage oil to guide my way. My hard cock bumped against her leg. “I think it’s coming back to me.”

Leah groaned, her hips circling with the movement of my fingers. “That seems about right.” Her words came between gritted teeth. “But I think, if I remember correctly, you requested that I make myself come with my fingers.”

“That’s right.” My thumb drew slow, hard circles around her clit and I slipped two fingers inside her. Her hips bucked up and I moved with her rhythm, then slammed her hips back down to the bed so she couldn’t escape. Adding one more finger, I thrust deep inside her, loving the feel of her trying to trap my finger inside. Leah’s moans were muffled in the pillow as she kept squirming, but I didn’t stop. She wanted to come, and she was going to come. Her body pulsed around my fingers and she gave in, crying out as her release crashed through her.

“Shh,” I said, pulling her hair so she met my eyes. My other hand was still inside her. “Raven.”

“Bastard.” She laughed.

I let go of her, grinning. “I promise to never do it again.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it.” She crawled into my arms, resting her head on my shoulder. “We’re so sticky.”

“We could take a shower.”

“Not now. I don’t want to move.” Leah nestled in closer. “And I think this describes us. Sweet, messy, and totally inappropriate.”

“You’re right.” And I loved it. We were so fragile, just testing the waters. It could still blow up in our faces, but she nailed it. Even better, she embraced it. For now anyway. In the morning, I’d leave her again, and real life had a way of making messy and inappropriate look like exactly what it was. “So you didn’t have any of that stuff with your husband?”

“What stuff?”

“The toys.” I drew lazy circles on her arm. “You freak out anytime I want to use them. But they’re yours.”

“Oh.” A blush crept down her body. “I’d never used any of that stuff with anyone else.”

“Really? Your husband wasn’t into that?” She shook her head. “What a fucking tool.”

“He’s the manager of the tool department.” Leah laughed. “Nope. I’d never been with anyone else, so at first when it was some awkward groping and a little bit of annoying penetration, I didn’t know what I was doing, either. But it never moved past that. Now that I know how he really felt about me,” she took a deep breath, “maybe I just didn’t turn him on. But he didn’t even give me a chance.”

For a man to have a woman like Leah in his bed and not touch her was an absolute sin.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I said more to myself than to her. She looked up at me, wrinkling her brow in confusion. “Hands down you’re the most enticing woman I’ve ever been to bed with. The way you move,” my body shook thinking about it, “is so raw and sensual. You hit the sheets and you turn into a goddess, Leah.”

She rolled her eyes. “Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not.” Leah looked at me like I was crazy. “I’ve been with a lot of women—“

“I changed my mind.” She smirked. “Lie to me.”

“No. I’m not exaggerating even a little bit. That night at the hotel when you let me photograph you--“

She tapped my lips. “Which you still won’t let me see.”

“They’re not ready yet. Anyway, you had me on my fucking knees. I tried to play it off like I was trying to get a shot, but I literally couldn’t stand.”

“Really?” I nodded. “Wow,” she said quietly, considering that. “Honestly, so much of this stuff is so far out of my comfort zone, I can’t even believe I’m doing it. But you get this look on your face when we’re together—“

“What look?”

“Don’t make me describe it.” Leah pushed her hand against my chest. “And I don’t want you to be self-conscious about it, either. Anyway, I look at you and something inside me just snaps and all my inhibitions totally disappear. You make me want things I didn’t even know were possible.”

“Wow.” It was my turn to be speechless. “That’s fucking hot.”

“It is.” Leah pulled herself away from me, reaching around to her back and then licking the caramel oil off her fingers. She shrugged. “I can’t believe you’re leaving me in the morning. You just got here.”

“We can do this any time we want.” I dragged her back down. “We’ll make this work.”

“What are you doing for Christmas?” she asked.

My heart screeched to a halt at the thought of it. “Working.”

Her face crumbled. Shit. Leah squeezed her eyes closed and she took a deep breath. “I have no right to hate your job. I would’ve never met you otherwise. But I hate it. So much. I hate that you came up here and everything’s incredible, but you go back to
that
. The minute you leave, everything we have is a lie.”

“It’s not a lie.” My mouth went dry. “I’ve been completely honest with you. This isn’t easy, for either of us. If we’re going to be together, you need to be with all of me.”

“That’s the thing. I can’t be with all of you. Because of that.” She frowned, then forced a wobbly smile. “Can’t you call in sick or something?”

I shook my head.

“That’s not fair. You deserve a Christmas, too.”

I usually welcomed clients on holidays. I didn’t feel like such a freak when I spent the day with someone who was just as fucked up as I was. “It’s just a day, Leah.”