“Ooh, baby, you’re so delicious.” Her skin, so soft and smooth. She obviously had packed herself for this trip, no slinky silver numbers tonight, but she still looked so good in a simple Henley t-shirt with a few buttons undone at the top. Yes, I could start with kissing her there. Then at the hotel, I could slip the shirt all the way off.
“Well, maybe just one little kiss more.” She gave me a flirtatious wink and I nearly fell off the piano seat. Did she know what she was doing to me? I somehow made it to the final line of the song without tearing my fingers off the keys and sinking them into her.
We chorused, “Baby it’s cold outside!” smiling at each other as we did it. And then, then I sank down to her, one hand at the back of her head, the other around her slim waist, and I kissed her like I’d never kissed anyone before. I drank her in, sweeter than anything I’d ever tasted, my favorite drug. I could feast on her all night long.
Applause rose up around us, cheers too, and I realized we had an audience. She slowly did, too, though she seemed as rapt in our kiss as me, and we only reluctantly loosened our embrace to turn our heads and see.
At least 15 people stood around us, half of them with camera phones up and in action. Snapping pictures, capturing it all on video. We’d just put on a show.
I rested my forehead against hers. Thankfully, I felt her chuckling, her arms still around me. I exhaled with relief. I didn’t want her freaked out over it, the way the spotlight followed me around. If she were going to become part of my life for real, she’d have to get used to it. And I was realizing I wanted that to happen. Needed it to happen.
“Happy holidays!” I raised my arm to them all, surrendering into it. Once people had found you like that, there was nothing to do but embrace it. I caught the bartender’s eye. Now he was looking over at us in a way he hadn’t been before. He clearly still didn’t recognize me. He looked like he listened to nothing but Edith Piaf and Charles Aznavour. But he’d realized I was someone other people recognized.
“Drinks for everyone!” I called out. “On me!”
Another cheer erupted and the phones got tucked away in the clamor to claim their prize. Free drinks were a fun way to spread around my celebrity status. Also I’d learned that they served as a great diversion tactic when you were trying to make an exit. The excitement of free drinks trumped Ash Black every time.
“On my card,” I mouthed to the old bartender who looked dumbstruck. He probably hadn’t had that many patrons in his bar over the past month. But he did have my card numbers still, imprinted from that ancient machine of his. The Parisian hole-in-the-wall version of “on my tab.”
Ana and I snuck out together into the falling flakes. She wound her scarf around her and I took out the hat she’d made me from my pocket. It really was a fantastic hat.
“That was so fun!” she exclaimed as we made our way along the cobblestone street.
A few flakes lay on her hair and eyelashes. I couldn’t help it. I pulled her under the arch of an entryway and sank into her again. The way she tasted, Bordeaux and Ana, so rich and sweet and delicious, savory and enticing. She wrapped her hands around my shoulders, pulling me down to her like she felt the same way. Standing there in the chilly night, snow falling around us, we made our own heat.
“I want to get you back to the hotel,” I murmured into her ear and she shivered. It might have been the cold, but I hoped it was anticipation. I knew I couldn’t wait.
We walked, arm in arm, through the streets toward our hotel. “You should do an album of old standards,” she declared. “People would love it.”
“You think?” No one had ever suggested such a thing to me.
“I know it. You’re so good with those old songs. You’re a really amazing singer. It’s such a cool combination. You hit all the right notes but with this gritty, Ash Black growl in it. People would go wild for it.”
“Do you go wild for it?” She was the only fan I cared about just then.
She looked up at me, shy. “Yes.”
We couldn’t get back to the hotel soon enough. And it did take a while. We’d somehow wandered a long ways away in our explorations. By the time we got back, there was no question about it, Ana was shivering from the cold. I should have grabbed us a taxi but I hadn’t realized we’d traveled so many city blocks away. Paris had a way of enchanting you, each street so engaging you lost track of how far you’d walked. Now Ana looked slightly blue.
“You need to warm up!” Inside the room, I set right to making a fire. That’s the last thing our vacation needed, Ana catching pneumonia. “Why don’t you warm up in a shower?”
She nodded, her teeth chattering, too frozen to speak. The staff had restocked our supply of dry firewood and I had a nice blaze going in no time. Perfect for Ana to stretch out in front of. With me. I’d warm her up.
One room over, I heard the sound of the shower running. The shower was running. With Ana in it. Naked.
There was my cock, instantly hard again, pressing against my jeans at the thought of her. So close, so naked, so pink and warming up and I could hop right in there with her.
Couldn’t I? We had signed a no-sex clause. That had been holding me back, though less and less as the days went on. Like a seatbelt that had frayed to the point of becoming useless.
I didn’t think Ana would turn around and sue me. To a PR rep like Lola, everyone was a walking lawsuit waiting to happen, but I knew Ana. She didn’t seem the litigious type. And right then, I didn’t care even if she did go ahead and sue me for everything I owned. Somehow in the last two weeks she’d turned everything upside down. All the shit I used to care so much about holding onto, none of it mattered anymore. All I wanted to hold onto was her.
“Ash?” Ana’s voice drifted to me, calling me through the bathroom door standing slightly ajar.
“Ana?” My voice sounded husky, even more so than usual.
“Want to join me?” she asked, sounding shy.
She didn’t need to ask me twice. I fed that no-sex clause right into the mental paper shredder where it belonged.
Under the spray of the shower, she couldn’t look more tempting, like a nymph rising out of the ocean. I’d crash my ship into the rocks over a siren like her. My clothes off in seconds flat, I joined her in the shower, my chilly hands around her waist making her jump.
Then I kissed her and she melted into me, so soft and sweet, a moan rising up out of the back of her throat. My cock throbbed painfully, pressing into her stomach, the two of us naked together for the first time. Like a kid finally allowed into the candy store where he’d been pressing his nose to the window every day for the past couple of weeks, I didn’t know where to put my hands first. Her ass, I grabbed her soft cheeks, marking her with my fingers as I pressed her against me. Her breasts, the perfect size, filling my hands, her nipples standing out hard and aroused. Her pussy, so sweet and sticky slick for me already as I sank a finger into her.
“Ash,” s
he murmured into my neck as she licked and sucked me there, her hands traveling down my chest as if she’d been just as desperate to touch me. She caressed my angles and planes, trailing kisses along my pecs, licking the lines of my tattoos. I’d tattoo every inch of my body if she’d do that to every one of them, tasting me, savoring all of me. Down my stomach, my lower abs.
Before I knew what was happening, she kneeled down before me, the warm spray of water hitting right between my shoulder blades. She took my huge shaft in both of her hands, cupping it, running her hands along it as if admiring its length.
“Jesus, Ana.” I groaned, steadying myself against the wall. Just her touch felt so good, so intense. My cock throbbed in her hands, pumping thick, straining for release.
“There’s something…” She hesitated, running her thumb along my wide crown. Every nerve in my body zeroed in on that touch. She found a drop of precome and spread it over my tip. And she licked her lips. “I want to…but I haven’t done it much so I don’t know—”
“Ana, suck me.” I panted, remembering her words from last night. “Suck my cock.” I knew she wanted to do it. And now she knelt before me exactly as I’d fantasized, her wide eyes looking up at me, her hands wrapped around my length.
She swallowed and parted her lips, then took in my tip. Slowly, tentatively. I groaned and made myself ball my fingers into fists instead of grab her hair and force her down on my shaft, hard. I wanted to feel her mouth around me, wanted to fuck her face, hard, but right now we had to go slow. I didn’t know if she’d like it, giving me that kind of power, surrendering and serving me. I thought she might, but right now I held back and let her have control, going slow.
She licked me like a delicious ice cream cone, swirling her tongue along my length, savoring every inch. She cupped the root of my shaft in her hands, pumping me, and I didn’t know how much more of it I was going to be able to take. Just the sight of her, her plump lips parted, at my feet. Then she took more of me into her wet, sucking mouth and she moaned.