Page 141 of Naughty November
“You’re leaving tomorrow?”
Arousal flared hot and low at the base of my spine.
I’d really been apart from him too long. I’d nearly forgotten how responsive he was, how much hewanted.
“It’s a guest pass,” I reminded him. “One nighthere.”
His shoulders sagged, embarrassment coloring his face. I released his chin and tapped my palm a little harder than he deserved against his warm cheek.
“Pick one,” he rasped, tearing himself away from me and shoving the plastic menu into my chest. He flagged down a bartender and got himself a whiskey, his posture so tense I could have tied someonetohim and he could have kept them standing tall through a good lashing.
God, I loved Niko.
Loved the way he hated himself for the things he liked.
It made those things so much more fun for me.
“This one,” I said after he swallowed down a shot of whiskey. He glanced over and followed my finger to where it pointed in the middle of the third row.
“Of course.” He ordered a second whiskey, this time with water. He knew me and my rules well.
I propped my chin on his shoulder, lips grazing over his earlobe. “I do love to degrade you, sweetheart.”
He shivered against me, leaning back so slightly that if I hadn’t felt the change in his body heat, I wouldn’t have noticed.
“I want another one of these too,” I said, dragging my finger toward the line that called for a hands-free orgasm. “I know you can do it. In fact, I jerk off at least once a week thinking about the last time it happened.”
“I wish you’d never come to New York,” he lied.
“Not yet, you don’t,” I promised, sinking my teeth into the thin skin at the base of his neck. “But you will soon.”
THREE
NIKO
Parrish took the whiskey out of my hand, sipping at the overpriced liquor while he watched me with a fiery and dangerous expression. He’d never been anything less than trouble, taunting me and teasing me from the first day we’d met. Sometimes I wondered if taking a job at the palace was the biggest blessing or curse in my life, and when Parrish’s lush mouth burned hot against my skin, I didn’t see the difference between the two options.
My affair with Parrish had started off the same as most, I imagined. Not unlike Christian and Kale’s own relationship, against a wall under the cover of shadows. He’d spent weeks pushing my buttons, poking at me, calling me names and diminishing me over my job. And every night I’d gone home horny and frustrated, turned on beyond belief from all the things Parrish had spent the day spewing into my ears.
Finally, once I’d had enough, I shoved him against a wall, my forearm pressed hard against his Adam’s apple and, instead of fighting me off, he moaned. The asshole moaned at me, bucked his hips forward, and pushed his erection into my thigh. Before I could get away, he reached down and took my own hardening length into hishand, spun us both so it wasmyback against the wall, then he made me come in my pants with nothing more than his fingers.
The next morning, he’d deliberately spilled his coffee on me and ordered me to clean up the mess he’d left on the floor. I could have called a maid—should have—but he already had the towel in his hand and he was pushing me to my knees before I could argue. Whereas he’d spent weeks talking down to me, once I kneeled at his feet, wet rag in hand, Parrish bent low to my ear and called me a good boy, thebestboy.
I’d almost come in my pants a second time.
After I finished cleaning up the mess, he’d sent me on my way. Giving me a two-hour reprieve until he caught me in the same corridor, the same afternoon shadows, his hand was down my pants again, fist hot and tight around my cock. Parrish whispered all sorts of names into my ear, slut being his favorite by far. Though sometimes he called me sweetheart instead and the synapses in my brain misfired completely.
We carried on like that for months until Christian fell in love and decided to move to America. Phillip sent me with him, and everything had been in a state of upheaval ever since. Christian and Kale were kinkier than half the guest list at The Black Door, and I’d ended up with an eyeful—or earful—on more than one occasion. I wasn’t a stranger to the things that went on in a place like this, even if my personal understanding of it wasn’t up to par with their own lived experience. Every night I had to tail them to The Black Door, I found myself resentful of my job, my status, my rank. All the things Parrish had taunted me over, the things he’d made into sticking points with the intent to get me off, they burned. Real life reminders that I couldn’t have the things I wanted for myself.
I could have my apartment and my paycheck. The rest would have to wait.
Parrish wrapped his arm around my midsection, a warm banded reminder that my time to wait was, at least temporarily, over.
“Before I make you come, Niko, I want to know why you haven’t called me since you moved,” he said, pulling me away from the bar and toward a small overstuffed chair in the corner. He landed on thecushion and pulled me down onto his lap, using his feet to spread my legs apart and his arm to press my back against his chest.
“I’ve been working.”
“You worked before,” he said. “You’ll work again.”