Lust (13 page)

Ivy was quiet for a moment before saying, “Okay,
Always Been Mine
by Carina Adams.”

“What’s it about?” I asked, even though I really didn’t give a shit.

“Josephine—or Joes as she is called a lot—is separated from her husband. Matty is her best friend and co-worker and has been in love with her for years, but neither one of them have ever admitted it to each other. It’s one of my favorite books.” Her voice picked up and softened as she spoke of these two fictional characters as if they were real.

“So I have to pretend to be Matty, who has been in love with Joes forever? I can do my best, Ivy, but I’m not an actor, and I’ve never been in love.”

“Just read it, Cade. You’ll know what love feels like when you read their story.”

“Okay, I’ll get it and read it tonight. But you better be ready for tomorrow.”

“I’ve read the book about four times, but I’ll read it again with you tonight… just to make sure I’m in it right.”

With a smile on my face, I hung up the phone and left the office. I no longer needed to occupy my mind with files and billing. My mind was occupied enough with the thoughts of seeing Ivy the next night. I couldn’t wait to get home and read this book she had picked to impersonate. Just thinking of having to pretend to be in love with Ivy sent alarm bells of in my head, but it was my idea and I had to follow through with it.

I made it home and immediately downloaded the book. Ivy said it was her favorite book, and so far, the ones she had suggested were pretty good. I only hoped this one was the same. The cover was of a woman hovering over a man, and I found myself praying for hot sex scenes that I would be able to bring up the next night. I needed to push Ivy a little harder, and if I could use this book to do that, then I would.

Turns out the book was good and there was a second one in the series. Matty, the guy I would be playing at the dance club, rode a motorcycle and was part of a motorcycle club. That made me feel better about acting him out. I never had a bike or had ever even ridden one, but I was pretty sure I could pull off the whole badass biker well. And Ivy was right… reading that book helped me understand what love would feel like if I ever allowed myself to do so. But I knew that would never happen.

I finished the book at almost three in the morning and immediately bought the next,
Honey
Whiskey
. I read about four chapters before falling asleep with my iPad in my hand. I told myself I needed to read it to get more into character, but that was a complete fabrication. I wasn’t an actor and would probably never do this Matty character justice, but I was sure Ivy had read it and wanted to impress her.

The other reason was that Matty was dominant in bed, and I felt we had that in common. Reading the sex scenes made me imagine Ivy; it made me imagine the things I could do to her… things I knew she wanted to have done to her. I wanted to mark her skin the way Matty marked Joes’. I wanted bruise her nipples and leave them sore the way Joes had described hers as feeling.

The entire book consumed me, picturing Ivy with every word.

My only hope was to get through the night without taking our role playing game too far.

Dara, one of my newer clients, sat in my office on Friday afternoon. I had only been seeing her for a few weeks, and I felt confident I wouldn’t need to see her much longer. Her case was simple. She had zero self-worth and even less self-confidence. Her brothers and their friends had teased her mercilessly growing up and it damaged the way she viewed herself. There really wasn’t anything wrong with her and I couldn’t quite understand why she felt that way, but I guess some people are weak and take hateful words too seriously.

Treating Dara was easy. I had taken her to a department store one day and had the woman at the makeup counter work on her some. It didn’t take much, showing her how to apply a small amount of makeup yet still look good. That was my thing. I hated women that wore too much makeup. All it did was cause me to question what was under it all. It reminded me too much of a mask and irritated the shit out of me. But with a little color and some black shit on her eyes, she looked great. Then we went to her size in the clothes—which in my opinion was average size, yet she seemed to think she was big—and I picked out a few outfits to try on. It was for the sole purpose to show her what looked good on her. I guess hearing me tell her she looked sexy boosted her ego some.

She was looking and dressing better than she had a few weeks ago when she first stepped foot in my office. All we had left to do was take the clothes off. Feeling confident while fully dressed was the first step, but it didn’t mean shit if she couldn’t feel that way without a stitch of clothing on. After all, my profession was sex.

“Let’s start small, Dara. Unbutton your shirt,” I ordered from my chair.

With her eyes cast down to her fingers, she began to slowly unbutton her shirt. Normally, this was fun to watch, but I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I used to. Instead of watching her skin slowly peek through the material, my mind began to wander… wondering what Ivy would look like as she took off her clothes.

“Look at me when you do it,” I said, hoping if I had the attention of her eyes, I could stay focused on Dara instead of the images of Ivy that filled my mind. “That’s good. Don’t look away from my eyes, no matter where I’m looking. I want to see you.”

Finally, her shirt was fully unbuttoned and hanging loosely at her sides.

“Good, now take it off.” My voice was hard and deep. I’m sure to her ears I was completely turned on, which wasn’t a bad thing since my goal was to give her confidence. But in reality, I was trying to focus my attention on her. I was concentrating, not fighting my inner urges. “Now the skirt. Stand and unzip it; let it fall to the floor.”

Dara did as she was told and I watched as her skirt fell to the carpet by her feet. My mouth watered as I wondered what Ivy would be wearing that night, and if it were a skirt, I thought about watching it fall away from her body. With some determination and control, I pulled my eyes back to Dara’s and smiled, giving her a boost to her ego.

Her cheeks were red, reminding me of Ivy’s when she got embarrassed.

Fuck! I needed to stop thinking about her and focus on the woman in front of me.

“Stand up straight, shoulders back,” I demanded and she did as she was told. “You want to be seen as sexy? Nothing is sexier than confidence. Slouching is not confident.” As I spoke, she stood taller, straighter, and popped her hip out. Yes, that was sexy.

I stood from my chair and walked over to where she was standing. My fingers reached out and pulled the strap from her bra off her shoulder while watching her face. Her eyes shot away and I had to remind her to again to look at me. I ran a finger across her stomach, making her hold her breath until I was done.

Usually, things like this caused some kind of attention in my pants—a twitch or something—but not this time. Instead, I was more focused on doing my job than what my job usually did to me. It was strange, but I couldn’t help but think it had something to do with Ivy.

Dara proceeded to remove the remainder of her clothes, standing in front of me with absolutely nothing on except her heels. Looking at her, she was sexy, but she wasn’t the one I wanted to look at. She had everything I loved to see on a woman, large breasts that hadn’t been taken down by gravity yet, curvy hips that were made to grab, and a round ass, perfect for leaving red handprints on. But it wasn’t what I wanted to see.

I instructed Dara to get dressed again and then wrapped up the session, informing her she cleared. My admission seemed to have taken her by surprise because she looked sad at the knowledge of not coming back. When asked what was wrong, she shyly told me she thought we would do more.

I could have done more with her, but I knew it was wrong. Ethically speaking, she didn’t have an issue with sex, only with herself. So there was no need to take it to that step. The other reason was more difficult to admit to myself, though. After seeing Ivy, and after being with Alyssa the other night, I didn’t have much of a desire for it anymore. I mean, I had the desire, but only for one person. And I needed to get that out of my system before I could move on.

The rest of the day was a blur as I counted down the time until I could see Ivy. Different scenarios ran through my head, all of them ending with me buried deep inside of her. I knew that couldn’t happen, and I knew I couldn’t call Alyssa to relieve me before I picked Ivy up, so I was left with taking care of myself in the shower… twice. I only hoped that was enough to keep me away from her.

*****

The club was dark, loud, and crowded, just as I told Ivy it would be. I thought it would be good for her, but it proved to work out best in my favor. The darkness allowed me to look at her in ways she should have never seen me doing. The noise level kept us from talking too much, since I didn’t trust myself with words around her while she was wearing skin-tight leggings and a really low-cut top that gave her an illusion of having cleavage. And the crowd kept her eyes busy as I stole illicit glances her way.

I ordered us each a drink, knowing I had to limit my intake, and then sat on a couch against the wall near the dance floor. I had given myself permission to have three drinks with nothing other than water for the last hour we would be there. It wasn’t my typical rule, but it was needed. Without the alcohol, I knew I would be too rigid around her, but if I had too much, I knew I wouldn’t be able to control myself. And I knew Ivy would need something to loosen her up as well. I convinced myself that we needed a few drinks and didn’t allow the dark voice in my head to tell me how wrong it was.

“I don’t know how I’m supposed to act,” Ivy yelled near my ear so that I could hear her.

“Act like Joes,” I replied with a smile only I knew what it meant.

“I don’t know how to act like her.”

I didn’t know what she meant by that. Joes had self-esteem issues and so did Ivy; I would assume she would know how to act. I leaned in closer to her ear and asked, “What would she do right now? If this was the book, what would she be doing?”

Her brows pinched together as she looked at me. “Before the bar scene or after?”

I knew exactly what she was talking about. I had the picture of that scene pinned to my metaphorical corkboard in my mind since reading it. “For the sake of having a good time, after.”

“Then she would suck this drink down and dance. Then she’d go home with Matty.”

She completely took me by surprise with that. I glanced at her glass and realized it was halfway gone, and wondered just how much of a lightweight she was. “Then suck away, Joes.” Wrong thing to say. Once those words left my lips, all I could picture was her sucking… and the bulge in my pants knew it wasn’t her drink.

“You’re not really acting like I imagined Matty would.”

I shrugged my shoulders and tried to look away. “From what I gather of the dude, he’d be fucking you on the dance floor. And from what I gather of you, you wouldn’t like that too much.” I looked back at her and caught her wide eyes. “Am I wrong?”

Her head shook from side to side, swaying her hair over her shoulders. “Maybe I picked the wrong book.” Her voice was quiet, but I was able to read her lips well enough to understand what she was saying.

“No, I just think we haven’t had enough to drink yet.” That gained a smile from her.

The air around us was full of tension until the end of her second drink. By then, her knee was bouncing to the beat of the music and she seemed to have loosened up quite a bit. I was still nursing my first drink and felt like I was wound tighter than line on a fishing rod pulling in a Great White.

I needed to do something, anything. I couldn’t just sit there for the rest of the night and battle with myself. I took her hand in mine before I talked myself out of it, and led her to the dance floor. Her body stiffened against mine as she looked up at me with a concerned expression. With my hands now on her hips and slowly moving them in time with mine, I leaned down to meet her ear with my lips. “Relax. It’s just me and you out here… no one else.”

“I told you… I can’t dance.”

I smiled and said, “I can’t either. So don’t worry about it.”

No matter what I did or said, she was stiff and nervous. After one song of horrible dancing from both of us, we sat back down and ordered another drink. I had to do something. Everything that played out in my mind throughout the day was proving to be the complete opposite. I needed her to loosen up, to get out of her own head. Part of me was wondering if the loud club was a bad idea. It helped with keeping my mouth closed, but it seemed to have had the same effect on her, and that’s not what I wanted.

I placed my hand on her thigh and felt her body freeze. “What can I do to help calm you down?”

She shook her head with a worried look in her eye. It almost seemed as though she was on the verge of having a panic attack. “I’m fine just sitting here.”

“Why don’t you want to dance?”

Her eyes moved away from mine and I could tell she didn’t want to answer me.

I grabbed her chin and forcefully made her look at me. “You are not Ivy Jaymes tonight. You are Joes. You are strong, confident, and sexual. I am not Cade. I am not your therapist. I am Matt, who is in love with you and who does things to your body no one else can. Do you understand me?” I was yelling at her as if it were a lecture, a harsh pep talk that she needed to hear.

“I don’t know how to be sexual,” she argued back.

I winked at her and smiled. “Good thing for you that Joes does. And it’s another good thing that I am a sex god.” It was meant as a joke, but saying that to her and watching her eyes go wide made the smile fall from my lips. I had to back away before I did something I would regret.

What she did next shocked and surprised me at once. She touched my face, keeping it from pulling too far away from her, and leaned in, pressing her lips to mine like she had a week earlier. It was soft and quick, but enough to make the breath in my lungs disappear. I wanted to lean in and deepen it, lick her bottom lip until she opened up for more, but she didn’t give me the chance. Instead, she took my hand and pulled me back out into the crowd.

Her back was to my chest and I had my hands on her hips. Her ass was moving against the front of my jeans and I worried I would give her a surprise if she kept it up. After a minute, I could feel her body physically relax against mine and I began to move my hands flat against her stomach. I needed to feel her and that was the only way it was going to happen.

She placed her hands on top of mine, keeping them from wandering further along her body. I had my head bent down by the side of her face and it allowed me to smell her hair. I felt creepy doing that at first, but there was something about her scent that calmed me. I felt calm, relaxed, happy even. For the first time in God knows how long, I felt light. I didn’t feel the darkness that had always surrounded me, even while standing in a dark room packed with hundreds of strangers. I didn’t feel the weight of my past on my shoulders. And the hatred for love that had always swirled within me seemed to have disappeared as well. Ivy was my salvation. She was my therapy. And as much as I wanted to rush things along to make the uncertainty of things go away, I knew I needed her on some level. That thought should have scared me. It should have evoked a fear deep within, but the scent of her hair and the feel of her body in my hands was enough to keep it away. At least for the time being.

She spun in my arms, locked her fingers together behind my neck, and pulled me closer. With a soft, lingering kiss on my cheek, she moved her lips to my ear and asked, “Is this what it’s like to feel sexual?”