PROTECT and SERVE (A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance) (42 page)

She disconnected the call and waved us back over. “Right. Sorry about that, I just wanted to check on the preparations first. I’m afraid that they were running a
little
behind schedule, but I’ve been given the
all clear
to let you through. Let me assign you your keys…”

The clerk took a moment to run our door keys through the system, and quickly assembled a folder of reading material, hotel rules, and assorted information for us.

“Now then, you’ll be in Room 4B. Let’s see… I’ve got the wifi password right here, written up here at the top…” She quickly pointed out the information with a fingertip, “and beneath that is the code you type in to request room service. If you have an emergency, please type in
Pound Sign, One
into the phone, and wait three to four seconds. That should be on a sticker on your phone but, you know, just in case…”

We quickly signed the liability and reservation forms she presented to us, and the clerk smiled chirpily at us.

“Excellent. Welcome to the Rasidion Hotel, Mister Carlyle and guest. I hope that you
do
enjoy your stay, and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you need anything at all.”

“Splendid,” Dalton smiled, taking the folder. “You’ve been a delight. I apologize for any inconvenience in my reservation tonight.”

“I’m just happy you managed it,” she shrugged happily. “It was canceled early this morning. You usually need to book that a month in advance, unless you’re one of our Premiere Club guests…”

“Maybe it’s my lucky day,” he smiled, and we departed off down towards the elevator. After a moment, he keyed in the top floor, and we began the ascent.

“What did you do?” I asked curiously, peering at him. “That didn’t seem like any old hotel reservation to me…”

“Tonight is meant to be special,” he casually shrugged. “I called around to see if I could land a room befitting the occasion, and it just so happened that this one was open.”

“What kind of room?”

“You’ll see,” he smiled warmly.

We rode the rest of the way in silence. After a moment, the doors pinged open, and we stepped out into a particularly extravagant hotel floor. It was as if Natalie had just decided to talk her parents into
buying part of the hotel
. The crown molding
alone
looked like it went for a premium, and the décor seemed to favor crystal.

“Whoa,” I murmured to myself as I took in my environment.

“A little better than you were expecting, isn’t it?” Dalton smugly whispered into my ear. “Just wait until you see our room…”

He led me down the hall, looking for the right place. There were only a couple of rooms up here – maybe half a dozen, maximum. I could barely keep my eyes off of how the lights bounced off of the crystal and the silver, filling the entire area with a sort of otherworldly glow.

Finally, we stopped at a door marked
4B.
Grasping his keycard, he squeezed my hand and slid it down the reader alongside the doorknob.

“I just want you to know that I understand what you told me over the phone earlier,” Dalton smiled. “
No promises
. I get it. I didn’t do all of this to break that… so, keep that in mind when you see everything.”

I nodded hesitantly.

Dalton opened the door, motioning for me to step inside… and my jaw practically dropped straight to the floor.

W
hat I had walked
into wasn’t just some decent guestroom in the middle of a nice hotel. This was the most hysterically lavish room that I’d ever been in. This was the kind of room I thought belonged in the middle of some Northern European palace, and certainly not anywhere near where I lived.

The room was decorated from top to bottom in lavish tapestries, premium antique furniture, pristine crystal décor, and lush carpeting that was soft to the very touch.

The king-sized bed that dominated the center of the main room bore a lush mattress that was probably more expensive than half of Natalie’s apartment…

A premium wine cooler, tucked away neatly into the fully featured kitchen, came stocked with ample red wine of a particularly historic vintage, at over a hundred years old.

It even came stocked with all the amenities. The luxurious, oversized bathroom hid a large hotel shower chamber, with glass walls and a stunning array of showerheads in all directions.

But perhaps the most stunning aspect of this incredible hotel room was the view. Much like the apartment I shared with my rich best friend, the far wall offered an incredible view. However, the differences were that a) the wall was a solid sheet of glass, with expensive drapes ready to draw together for privacy, and b) the view was
much
better, giving a jaw-dropping glance over the city, the park, and the river nearby.

“How… how did you do this?” I asked him, barely able to coherently string thoughts together, either in my head or aloud.

“I pulled a few strings,” Dalton chuckled, watching me take in my surroundings with warm and reflective affection. “I had to pay a little more for this one, but as soon as the opportunity was available… I knew I had to have it.”

“Do you do that often?” I asked slyly.

“What’s that?” He asked, setting our to-go plates of dinner into the premium refrigerator. He quickly withdrew a bottle of red wine and a pair of wine glasses from the attached wine cooler.

“
Take
opportunities as they arise.”

“I don’t like to let things pass by,” Dalton shrugged, setting the glasses on the counter as he began to uncork the wine. “Call me what you will, but even before the Marines… I acted on instinct. Followed my gut. It even saved my life a few times.”

“Is that so. Like when?”

Dalton went quiet, staring into space. For a moment, I thought he was thinking about how to answer the question, but then I realized that the bottle of wine was being to shake slightly…

I took it from his hand, setting it beside the glasses, and took his trembling hand in both my own.

“Dalton? Are you okay?”

He blinked a few times.

“What? Yeah. I’m fine.”

I wasn’t convinced. “Are you… sure?”

“Yeah, just a, uh, a flashback,” Dalton chuckled as he shook his head. “Lately, I’ve been having a few flashbacks to a particular moment during my time in the desert…”

“Do you want to talk about it? I asked.

He looked strained for a moment. As he resumed uncorking the bottle, he poured us a pair of glasses of wine. “I was a ground trooper in the United States Marine Corps, placed into combat zones in the Iraq War. There are things that I’ve had to do … things that I’m not necessarily proud of, and things I’ll take to my grave. But never,
ever
have I done something unless it was to save my life or those of others.”

I nodded carefully, taking the glass of red that he handed me.

“One particular time, there was this insurgent… I was trying to save another member of my platoon, an older Marine by the name of Darren. Darren was wounded by mortar fire. I was trying to drag him out of the rubble of a building when an enemy trooper got the jump on us… he knocked my gun away, but I managed to keep him away from it. It came down to him versus me, both reduced to our combat knives, and I was just trying to save my friend…”

“You don’t have to say any more,” I reassured him, running my hand along his. “Whatever happened out there, it doesn’t matter to me. You were saving a life. Did he make it?”

Dalton looked up.

“Yeah. He made it. He retired a couple of years later. We got him to medical, patched him up… lost a leg, but he wears that prosthetic proud now.”

“Then you did the right thing,” I told him.

He nodded. “Yeah. Sorry about kind of zoning out about that.”

“No! God, no. Don’t apologize for a thing,” I whispered, setting the glass of wine down and throwing my arms around him. “Listen, Dalton… you were in
war
. You had to fight for this country… and you had to save your people.”

“That’s right,” he nodded thoughtfully.

The thought of him out in the desert with a knife, protecting wounded warriors, tugged at my heartstrings… but it also made him look even tougher, ever stronger than ever.

It ignited something deep inside me.

I took him by the hand and led him towards the bed, then tried to weakly push him down.

“Oh, is that how it’s going to be then, huh?” He chuckled, amused by my reactions. “Didn’t know war stories did it for you.”

“Shut up and get into the stupid bed.”

“Yes ma’am,” he winked, kicking off his shoes and climbing backwards onto the bedding. I did the same, curling up next to him, feeling the lust begin to burn deep inside me.

I knew then that I had to have him.

Dalton pulled me up against himself, his fingers threading into my hair to pull me into a deep and passionate kiss. I submitted to his demands, returning his zealousness with my own – I tugged his bottom lip between my teeth, slid my nose across his as I slightly adjusted my positioning, and flicked his lips ever so lightly with the tip of my tongue.

He grinned into this last part, and our lips parted together to allow our wet tongues access to one another.

I loved the strength and the cunning of his tongue against mine. With the warmth and power of his broad body pressed up against me, and his fingers tenderly stroking the contours of my jaw and my throat, I lost myself in that deep, carnal kissing of ours.

There was no denying it.

This just felt so absolutely right.

I don’t recall exactly how my dress came off, but soon I was in just my bra and thong against him, tugging off his blazer and diving for the buttons to his button-up.

As I slowly revealed his abdomen, I gasped in surprise; not only was he built broad and strong, but he bore a panty-drenchingly firm six-pack under his clothes.

“You like what you see, huh?” He cockily asked, grinning confidently.

“Duh.” I shook my head, taking in his heavily sculpted build. “Good god, you’re buff.”

“Yeah, it turns out that a few years in the Marines will do that for you,” Dalton shrugged. “I was already in fairly good shape before, but all those drills and marches really helped me hone my physique…”

“You’re telling me,” I nodded. I wanted to lick the contours of his abs…

Instead, I settled for kissing along them, feeling the taut skin beneath my lips. Whatever resistance I might have still put up to this idea was now
long
gone. The rest of the world was an afterthought… it was just Dalton and myself, alone in this lavish room with the stunning evening view of the city…

His shirt came off, leaving me in my underwear and him in his jeans. I could already sense the frustrated erection beneath, but I wasn’t ready to make that move yet.

Sensing this, Dalton didn’t skip a beat in shifting me onto my back into the bedding. His hungry lips found their way to my throat, and I slipped my arms around his neck as he began kissing beneath my jawline, eliciting a string of quiet moans from me.

I felt the chill of nervousness glide down my body, but I did my best to ignore it. The anxiety crept up slowly, gradually working its wicked magic against my pleasure.

He must have picked up on that, because he pulled back after a moment.

“Is something wrong?” Dalton asked hesitantly, watching me carefully. After a moment, recognition flared across his eyes. “Is this your first time?”

He started speaking at a thousand words a minute, his English accent blending his words together. “If we’re going too fast, it’s fine, I mean we can slow things down a little, I just don’t want you to be hurt—“

“It’s
fine
,” I smiled serenely, sliding my hand to palm his cheek. “This isn’t my first time, it’s just that… well… I didn’t have so great of an experience last time, is all.”

Dalton bit his tongue, but I pushed him on.

“Go ahead. Ask, if you want. We don’t keep secrets from each other.”

Quietly, he pressed: “Were you raped?”

My palm paused against his cheek. “No, nothing like that,” I answered calmly. “But the guy was… controlling, in a lot of ways. Some were subtle. Some… weren’t.”

He remained quiet, listening to me.

“Jeremy, the guy from the restaurant earlier… he was my ex-boyfriend. I spent two years with him. He was my first… everything. And I gave him that, willingly. He seemed like such a sweet guy.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I caught him cheating on me,” I shrugged. “People were telling me that he was, but I just didn’t want to believe it. He was always so convincing. I wanted to take him at his word for everything he said, and he started pitting me against my friends… which is why I don’t really have many of them anymore.”

“So, what broke the spell?”

I smiled in recollection. “He tried that shit between Natalie and me.”

Dalton chuckled knowingly. “Yeah… I can see that going belly-up for him. The two of you are
incredibly
close.”

“Right. That’s when I realized what was happening, and I found the strength to kick him out of my life. I hadn’t seen him since, not until tonight…”

Dalton slid his thumb against my chin, his index finger curled beneath it. He lifted my eyes to meet his.

“And he’s not here now,” he smiled. “Only me. You don’t have to worry about him now. But I’m glad that he didn’t hurt you… not physically, at any rate.”

“No, Jeremy was
all
psychological,” I clarified. “But you’re right.
You’re
the one who’s here… and the one I want to spend my entire night with.”

I leaned upwards and planted my lips against his again, murmuring softly as I tasted him.

All the way down to my bones, I could feel it:

I’m ready for this, Dalton. For you.

I let my eyes communicate that thought as my lips pulled away, and I bit my lower lip slightly, relaxing myself beneath him. He took the hint, rubbing his palm along my shoulder as he gazed deep into my eyes.

Dalton’s lips met my throat again, and his hands began to wander. I let the rising and falling of my chest draw out with satisfaction as his hand cupped my breast under my bra, squeezing the soft, supple flesh.

Already, I could feel that my nipples were starting to peak, driven by pleasure and anticipation. His toughened fingers brushed against them, rubbing the rising nubs as they began to stand at attention, demanding his touch.

Answering their call, he lowered his lips and took one of my nipples into his mouth. With just the right amount of pressure, he tugged at the sensitive nub between his teeth. Letting his tongue flow across the erect peak, he cupped my breasts with his large, strong hands, squeezing the supple flesh and tantalizing me further.

“Oh, Dalton…” I moaned, closing my eyes and relaxing beneath his touch. I couldn’t complete the thought aloud, because he switched to the other nipple, squeezing tighter, biting harder, and mixing just the right amount of pain into the pleasure.

Leaving his hands where they were, he redirected his lips downward, kissing his way along my abdomen. I felt him glide his hungry, lustful pecks down towards my glistening sex, and the anticipation began to mount higher than before. Instead of going straight for the prize, he began to kiss along the seam of my hip instead, planting his lips along my inner thigh before switching to the other.

Meanwhile, his hands nimbly pleasured my bosom. His fingers tweaked my nipples, rolling and squeezing them between his fingers as he played me like an instrument.

Finally, I felt the pressure of his mouth against my thong. I pushed upwards, eager for his attention, and he pushed downwards to meet the intensity of my need. He began to suck against the fabric, sliding his tongue along it to tantalize me, even tugging at the lining with his teeth. I didn’t want him to stop kneading my bosom…

So I unclasped the bedding at either side and began to slip off the final layer of resistance between us. After a moment, I was finally bare for him, completely vulnerable and naked underneath his powerful, hungry body.

“This isn’t fair,” I told him.

“What’s not fair?” He whispered, kissing into my thigh.

“All of
my
clothes are off, but you’ve still got half of yours on…”

“We can fix that in a moment,” he chuckled.

Before I could retort, he descended.

Dalton’s warm breath cascaded over my bare sex as he slipped his lips back down, parting my wet slit with that delicious tongue of his. As he shouldered my thighs and dug his fingertips into the fleshy softness, I felt his tongue slide up a line over my chasm, quickly zeroing in on my swollen clit.

“Oh…god…” I murmured, clenching at the pillows on either side as he flicked the bead of my passion with his wet mouth. “Dalton…
fuck
, that feels so goddamn good…”

He continued to taste me veraciously, his fingernails digging into my skin as he held my thighs shouldered around his neck. By skillfully varying the pressure against my clit, sometimes slipping down to fill my chasm with his eager tongue, he constantly propelled me to new heights.

British?
Yes.

Military?
Yes.

Arrogant?
Yes.

Skilled with his tongue?
FUCK YES.

My fingers threaded through his hair as I rode his face, feeling the throes of my first orgasm begin to build up in my core. Between my moans and hushed commands to keep going, I threw my head back into the pillows and gasped with growing, impending satisfaction…