Girl on a Diamond Pedestal (14 page)

He let out a rough groan and deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue against hers, reveling in the slick friction.

She wiggled against him. “Let me go.”

“Why?” he kissed her shoulder.

“So I can undo my bra.”

He licked the curve of her neck and blew against it, taking deep, masculine satisfaction in her shivered response. “I can do that.” He used his free hand to snap the clasp open on her bra, letting it fall loose.

“It can’t come off if you keep holding me prisoner.”

“But I can work with this.” He pushed the silky material up and revealed her breasts. He cupped her, sliding his thumb over her nipple. “Oh yeah, I can work with this.”

She arched against him. “Ethan.”

“What?”

“More. I can’t wait.”

“Patience is a virtue.”

“I don’t want to be patient.”

“I’ve been patient,” he said, lowering his head and flicking the tip of his tongue over her nipple. “I’ve been patient all day. It won’t hurt you to wait.”

She sucked in a sharp breath. “I think it will.”

“I won’t hurt you. I promise.” He meant physically. He wished he could promise it in a deeper way. That he could swear he would slay her dragons and make everything better. But he was no white knight. Come to that, Noelle wasn’t a princess locked in a tower. She was a woman. One who could take care of herself.

And that was something he found comfort in. Because God knew he wasn’t up to the task.

He ignored the fierce tearing sensation in his chest and focused instead on her body. On touching her. Loving her. This was the way he knew how to do it. The best he could give. And he would give it all.

He abandoned her breasts and tugged her panties down her legs, sliding his fingers through the pale curls at the apex of her thighs, rubbing her moisture over her clitoris.

“Ethan …” His name was a plea on her lips and he couldn’t get enough.

His whole body was hard, tense, needy. But he needed to give to her first. Needed her to take every last bit of pleasure that she could. He needed to give it to her.

Her lips parted, her head moving back and forth as he stroked her. She arched her body against his again, pressing herself more firmly against his hand. He penetrated her slowly with one finger and felt her tighten around him, a short sound of pleasure escaping her lips.

He let her ride out her orgasm and then slowly released his hold on her wrists. She slumped down the wall an inch, her breathing coming out in short, sharp gasps.

She moved and let her bra fall to the floor, then stepped out of her panties. She was naked now, so perfect. His wife.

His stomach tightened. It was so hard to breathe. Noelle was his wife. And it should make no difference to anything, because she wasn’t his wife in any real sense. But it did. It suddenly made everything seem different.

So he kissed her again, because that felt good. It made sense.

And when he laid her down on the bed, he tried not to look into her eyes. Tried not to give in to the intense tugging sensation in his chest. But he couldn’t manage either.
He looked at her, and he felt like he was drowning. It was like he was completely submerged in Noelle.

He took a condom from the bedside table drawer, an amenity always stocked at this hotel as well, and tore it open quickly, protecting them both. He put his hand on her hip and steadied her as he slid slowly into her.

He had to grit his teeth, hard, to keep from coming then and there, as she enveloped him. Body and soul.

She moved with him, against him, creating a rhythm he couldn’t deny. He had no control here. He was lost, and all he could do was let go, let himself get sucked down into the undertow. He didn’t have the strength to fight it. And he didn’t want to.

He wanted Noelle. Only Noelle.

Always.

His orgasm roared through him, tore at him like a beast before it overwhelmed him completely. It went beyond pleasure, beyond anything he’d ever known. It consumed him. She consumed him.

They lay together, her head on his chest, smooth hands stroking him.

“Did you … sorry, I know you came against the door but did you …”

“Twice,” she said.

“I’m usually a bit more considerate but this time … I couldn’t think.”

“That’s okay.”

It wasn’t though. It was wrong. He needed to keep his head on straight. To have everything organized and together for his acquisition of Grey’s. He didn’t need to be obsessed with a woman.

More than that, he needed Grey’s to matter. He would finally be able to see his father’s face as he pulled the rug from under him, and it had to
matter
. Because it was all
he had. It was everything he’d been working toward for years.

But right now, it felt like it didn’t matter at all.

Noelle rolled over and blinked. It was early in the morning. And Ethan wasn’t in bed. It didn’t surprise her for some reason. Something had happened last night. And she wasn’t sure if it was good or bad. Only that, for a brief moment, Ethan had looked … terrified.

It was all right. It only reflected what she felt.

Terror because Ethan had a part of herself she wasn’t sure she could ever get back. Funny though, because he’d also helped her find pieces of herself she hadn’t known existed. He had changed her. Or at least helped her figure out some ways to change herself.

It was scary to want someone so much. Scary but amazing. And it made her feel that she wasn’t alone.

She got up and reached for the light switch. It illuminated the glossy, opaque glass wall opposite the bed, making it mostly transparent. She could see Ethan’s silhouette. Naked. She was getting a view of his shower.

“Luxury hotel indeed,” she said.

She watched as his hands slid over his body, her heart rate increasing. There was a certain illicit thrill in watching him like this. Was it what he’d felt watching her play the first time? When she hadn’t known he’d watched her? Well, she hadn’t been naked but she’d been bare in a way.

If only she could get more than just a sexual thrill from watching him. If only she knew what he was thinking. She felt her nipples tighten, her body aching to have him touch her, not simply to watch him as he touched himself.

She swallowed hard and walked across the room. She was naked, and she wasn’t embarrassed. There was no way
for her to be embarrassed. Not with Ethan. She was more herself with him than she’d ever been in her life.

She walked into the expansive bathroom and stood in front of the glass shower door. Ethan looked up, water running down his face, his perfect body, the droplets dipping and pooling into the well-defined grooves between his muscles.

“Hi. May I join you?”

He smiled, a purely wicked smile. “Always.”

He kissed her, but differently than he had last night. More controlled. She tried to look at him, catch his eye, but she couldn’t.

“Ethan?” He looked at her then. For just a moment. And what she saw in his dark eyes made her feel shaky. There was an emptiness there, a distance that didn’t seem right.

But then he kissed her again. And his lips were so perfect. And the water was hot and soothing, and Ethan’s touch was slick and arousing. So she focused on that.

And she tried to forget the horrible, haunted look in his dark eyes.

“W
E’RE
going to a small event in one of the high-roller areas tonight. Very exclusive.”

Ethan rolled out of bed and Noelle watched each fluid movement with interest. The way his body worked, his muscle structure, his tan skin. It was all so deliciously different from hers. So very sexy. The kind of thing people wrote songs about.

She’d spent the majority of the day exploring it, but it hadn’t gotten old. Not even close. The really scary thing was that he was only more enticing now that she knew him so well. Now that she knew just how good things were between them. Now, looking at him made her shiver with the anticipation of pleasure to come.

She was a lost cause.

“We are?”

“Yes. Our debut as a married couple.”

For some reason that made her feel … she wasn’t sure how it made her feel. Nervous and edgy somehow. She didn’t feel ready to go and face people. Not knowing she loved him. Not after everything she’d given him. It felt so personal, and yet she felt as if she was wearing it, as bright and bold as any neon sign on the strip.

“Okay.
I
don’t really have anything to wear.”

“That’s fine. I saw something I liked down in one of the hotel shops yesterday. I’m having it sent up.”

She watched as Ethan dressed, as he covered the body she craved. He still looked good dressed. Though she’d rather picture him naked.

“I can pick my own dress …”

“And buy it too?”

His words cut much deeper than they should. “You know I can’t.”

“Then you’ll wear what I pick out.”

“Why are you acting like this?”

He breathed in deeply. “Like what?”

“A jerk.”

“I’m just … this is a big thing tonight.”

“You never let pressure get to you, Ethan.”

“Then I’m allowed a day, aren’t I?”

She tried to smile. “Of course. How long until this … thing?”

“Sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I got the call earlier when I went to order lunch for us. But it starts in a couple of hours.”

“That’s fine. I’m not that high-maintenance.”

“No. I know.”

The look on his face was strange, that cool distance still present in his eyes. She wanted to erase it. Wanted to bring back the warm man she knew and loved. But he seemed pretty determined to stay gone.

“I suppose I should take a shower. A non-peek-a-boo shower.”

He gave her a wicked half smile and for a moment, she could see Ethan again. “I make no guarantees.”

“I have to shave my legs.”

“You fight dirty. And yet, I don’t feel detoured.”

“What am I going to do with you?”

His eyes darkened, his expression going flat. “I could ask you the same question.”

The dress should have been illegal. He regretted choosing it. It was sexy in an overt way, and at the time, that had been the point. All of this had a point. He was feeling pretty regretful of the whole deal at the moment, at least the part he’d cast Noelle in, but it was too late to back out now.

This was why Noelle was in his life. This was what he’d married her for. He was letting it get muddled in finer feelings and things he had no business dwelling on. He needed to focus on the prize.

Tonight was the night to do just that. He would get what he needed, what he deserved. Tonight was the reason they were in Vegas. And he’d kept it from her. He was a bastard.

“This dress is a bit OTT, don’t you think?” she whispered as he keyed in the passcode and pressed the elevator button that would get them to the exclusive high-roller’s lounge.

“OTT?” he asked.

“Over the top,” she tugged the tight black hem down, trying to get it to cover more of her legs.

“Not in the least. You look every bit the young, hot celebrity. And just like the sort of woman who could entice me into a quickie Vegas wedding.”

“Is that the game, then?”

“You know it is.” He put his finger on the button again. As if it might make things move faster. As if it might make the whole night move faster. So he could get on with it. So he could get Noelle out of his life and back to normal.

He ignored the sick, tight feeling in his chest.

“Yeah,” she said softly. “I know.”

And she didn’t sound happy. Damn it that he cared. Damn her for making him care.

Why wasn’t she what he’d just said? A pretty ornament. A decoration. Why was she so much more? All kinds of extra stuff he didn’t need or want from her or anyone else. Why was he letting her split his focus? She was making him doubt what he was about to do, when it had been part of the plan from moment one.

The lift doors opened and he felt his scalp get tight, continuing down through his chest, his stomach. It was like he didn’t fit inside himself anymore. He just wanted to climb out of his skin. He would have done, if he could. He didn’t know why he didn’t feel like himself anymore, why he felt so wrong. And so right. That was the really fearsome thing. He felt more right just standing with Noelle than he ever had before she’d come into his life.

He took her hand in his and led her from the elevator, trying to ignore the slow, spreading sensation of fire that began where their skin touched and made a direct trail to his chest. To his heart.

The hall leading to the high-roller room was long and narrow, the walls black, sleek and glossy, the carpet bright red. Something to make the people who used the casino feel like celebrities.

There were so many things about the place he didn’t like. It was more his father’s style. Maybe when the ownership of Grey’s was transferred to him he would change it. Fix it. But then, this made money. It wasn’t really about his taste.

The tacky would probably have to stay. The marks his father had put on the place would stay.

Something he’d have to get used to.

He looked at her again one last time before he opened the door to the private room. She was perfect, blond hair
sleek, makeup expertly applied. Her wedding and engagement rings glittered on her well manicured hand.

She was the epitome of a trophy wife.

Thinking of her that way made him feel … it was wrong. They were partners. But tonight she would be playing trophy wife.

“Ready?”

She smiled. “Sure.”

He opened the door and revealed an expansive room, all high-gloss and gold-plated. The true mark of nouveau riche. Overdone, overstated.

The room was crowded with couples, men who had women draped over them, fawning. One woman at the blackjack table had two men draped on her arm. A refreshing change, to Ethan’s way of thinking. It was the only thing refreshing about the scene.

The rest of it was more of the same. People using other people for money. For sex. The kind of shallow existence his family seemed to aspire to.

That he aspired to. Except what he wanted was different. It
was
.

He scanned the crowd, past the gaming tables. His father was in the corner, a blond probably close to Noelle’s age on his arm.

“This way,” he said, tugging gently on Noelle’s hand, leading her through the crowd.

Damien looked up from his companion, his expression not changing when he saw him. “Ethan. What brings you here?”

Noelle looked at Ethan, her expression filled with confusion. She hadn’t known that his father would be here. That the show was for him. But every time Ethan had tried to explain, the words had stuck in his throat. She’d known
he wanted revenge. He hadn’t told her the part she’d play in it.

“Noelle and I decided to have an impromptu getaway. And wedding.” He held her hand up, still clasped in his, and let his father see her rings. “I assume you know who she is. Noelle Birch.”

His father’s face drained of color, but his expression didn’t alter.

He felt Noelle stiffen beside him, but she didn’t speak. She didn’t seem very present either. He looked at her, just a quick glance, but it was enough for him to see her blue eyes looking glassy, distant.

“Why did you come tonight, Ethan?” Damien asked, his tone implying that he knew perfectly well why. And that he didn’t like it.

“To let you know that grandfather is signing Grey’s over to me. All I needed was a wife, to prove how stable I was. How much more stable I was than you, and he was more than willing to pass it directly to me.”

“You can’t have …”

“I have,” Ethan said, cutting him off. He turned and put his hand on Noelle’s cheek. It was cold. “So now I have your company. I also managed to get one of the Birch women to marry me. Something you never managed to do. Funny how things turn out. Essentially, I have everything that you ever wanted.”

As soon as he said the words, he wished he could cut out his own tongue. To treat Noelle like a possession … it wasn’t something he’d truly thought through. Or maybe he had. Not simply to hurt his father, but to try and reduce her in some way. Because she was too much inside of him. What she made him feel was too big to handle.

He hadn’t fixed anything though. No, far from it. He could feel the fracture between them, the crack in the bond
they had built. And it provided him with no relief. Instead, it hurt like the severing of bone from tendon.

“What is it you hope to accomplish with this, Ethan?” Damien asked, pushing away from his date. “Proving the point that you’re somehow a man of valor, even while you stand here with your trophy bimbo? You aren’t any different. You aren’t any better. You’re just like me. You always have been, you always will be.”

Just like me.

Ethan swallowed hard. “Regardless, I’m the one who walks out of here a winner.” A lie. A bitter lie.

He tightened his grip on Noelle’s hand and turned away from his father, heading back toward the door. Noelle released her hold on his hand and walked ahead of him, her skin icy pale. Her expression was set, strong, not betraying a hint of emotion. But he could feel it, radiating from her, echoing inside him.

She opened the door and walked out into the hallway. He followed her, his eyes on her, no one else, because she was all that mattered.

He closed the door behind them and followed her into the elevator. Neither of them spoke until the doors closed.

“Why did you do that to me?”

“I didn’t do anything to you. It’s an act, Noelle.” The tension in him exploded, unraveling his control. “All of this is, it has been from day one, and you knew it then, and you know it now. What I said to my father, that was a part of it. I wanted him to face the fact that I did things right and I still came out ahead.”

“But you didn’t do it right! You lied. You cheated the game.”

“Maybe I did, but I’m not the same as him. Someone had to show him. Make him pay.”

“And you had to try and be the hero for your mother.”

Pain sliced at him and he ignored it, pressed on. “Someone had to be.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But there was nothing—” She looked up at him, her blue eyes unveiled now, all of her emotion exposed. “—nothing more painful that you could have said. It wouldn’t have been any worse if you’d called me your high-priced whore. Because that’s what you said I was to you. You reduced me to nothing more than my name. One of your many acquisitions.”

Anger boiled in him, at himself, at the damned heavy emotion that was crushing him beneath its weight. It drove him, compelled him to push back. And anger was much easier to embrace than the bigger, scarier feeling that was trying to claw its way into prominence.

“And I’m not the same to you, Noelle? Why did we get into this relationship in the first place? Because I had the power to give you back that wreck you call a home. Because you could use me to get your picture back in the paper, to climb back up onto your diamond pedestal. So don’t play the wounded maiden. You got what you wanted.”

“Fine. Maybe. But I didn’t just parade you through a room and treat you like an object. I have never treated you like an object, or a means to an end. And until tonight, you hadn’t treated me like one either.”

“Tonight was what
this
, this thing between us, this whole arrangement, was all about. You know that.”

“Yes,” she said. “We made an agreement in the beginning, and I’ve held to it. And I knew that being on your arm was a part of that. But now you know me. And you know what my mother did to me, how she used me. I thought that might change something.” She choked on the last words.

“It can’t.”

She looked down, and he looked past her, to where her expression was reflected in the high-gloss obsidian wall.

She looked tired. And sad. And he wanted to hold her. But he was the cause of her suffering, and wanting to be the one to ease it just seemed cruel.

“Well, fine then,” she said. “You did it. That’s all there is.”

The elevator doors opened and neither of them moved for a moment. Noelle felt each beat lacerating her tender heart. She was being beaten, destroyed from the inside out by her own body. Her own emotion.

When they got to the hotel suite he closed the door behind them. The silence was like an entity between them. Real and powerful, hard to break.

“I suppose I’ll see about getting my own room.”

“You damn well won’t,” he growled.

He pulled her to him then, his kiss hard, fast, containing all of the rage and frustration and bitter anguish she felt inside herself. It tasted like her own sorrow. Like the ashes and ruin of heartbreak.

And she gave as good as she got. Everything. Because he wasn’t allowed to just hurt her and walk away. He wasn’t allowed to feel nothing, not when every breath seared her insides. She laced her fingers through his hair and held him to her, hoping to make him feel what she did. To feel all of the pain and desire and frustration.

He wrenched his mouth from hers and trailed hot kisses down her neck, leaving flames in his wake.

“Ethan. Please.”

No matter what happened tomorrow. Or in the next hour. She needed him, with her, in her, now.

He pushed her dress up, that stupid dress he’d picked to make her look like a trophy.

“Say my name,” she said, working his belt buckle and opening the closure on his slacks. “I need to know that it matters.”

“Noelle,” he rasped, his voice rough. He slipped his fingers beneath the edge of her panties and tugged them down as he leaned her back onto the bed, her legs still hanging off the edge. He got down on his knees in front of her and shrugged his pants and underwear down his hips, leaving them most of the way on. There wasn’t time to take everything off. There wasn’t enough time, period. There never would be.