I watch the captivating turquoise glimmer in his eyes and I can read there that he’s as crazy-hungry as I feel. “I will.” My own honesty makes my heart beat faster.
Tomorrow I go back to work—or I pound the pavement in search of another job. If Ellen agrees to take me back, she’ll no doubt be bitter about the whole taking-time-off thing. She’ll want revenge.
I might as well enjoy the day like the fantasy it already is.
I don’t have to wonder how far Dallas Wilder will take me. I know he’ll give me all the enlightenment, heartbreak and ecstasy I can handle.
Maybe I’m setting myself up for a fall, but I’ve already hit rock bottom. My heart beats in a broken rhythm. I have nothing left to lose.
Except one thing.
My so-called innocence.
Yes, I’m a twenty-two-year-old virgin. Not exactly the end of the world but it also feels like I’ve missed out on something most people are well-practiced at by now and enjoying the hell out of. Sadie, for example, who has a new man on her arm every weekend. Not that any of them stick and/or make her particularly happy, but she insists she’s not in it for the long-term. She just so happens to like sex. Which, of course, makes me curious. If I didn’t work so much, I might try to make time for it.
As it is … I don’t.
I’ve never even been kissed.
I don’t know why I waited or what I’ve been saving myself for. I live in the beating neon heart of debauchery. I’ve had more marriage proposals, lewd offers and off-handed come-ons than I could ever count. Boys—and now men—have pursued me for as long as I can remember.
And every single time, I’ve shut them down with a cold heart they can’t possibly misinterpret. If you waver, they pounce on your weaknesses like they’ve never heard the word no. I make sure Idon’twaver. Ever. On my home turf, I know how to get out of every sketchy situation and by now I’m extremely good at avoiding trouble and shutting down the worst of it before it ever has a chance to escalate.
So I’ve somehow managed to get through all twenty-two years of my life relatively unscathed in that particular department—even though it sometimes feels like I’m scathed as fuck in every other department.
Dallas Wilder is different.
Maybe it’s because he’s literally a perfect stranger. He’s hot,he’s beautiful, he visits me in my dreams and he’s already made me more than one offer I can’t—or, more specifically, don’t want to—refuse. He’s also already given me my first-ever orgasm and he doesn’t even know it.
I want it to be him.
We pull up next to a cluster of large, fancy-looking buildings that might be a golf club. There are fields of manicured green grass. Off to one side is a helicopter landing pad with a gleaming black helicopter on it. The propellors are slowly starting to spin. Between that and the way Dallas Wilder is watching me, my stomach swoops.
The limo driver opens the door for us. Dallas lifts me into his arms, like he’s the dashing hero in some flowery, optimistic romance and I’m his blushing lover-to-be. “You ready, Amelie Thibodeaux?”
“Yes.”Whatever today is—fantasy, short story with an abrupt, crushing ending, or the prologue to something I don’t have a name for yet—I’m going with it.
16
I’m grippingDallas’s arm for dear life as we take off. He buckled me in and then buckled himself in and the pilot wished us a good flight over the intercom and I need to hold ontosomething.
“Holy shit, we’re fucking flying!” I scream-whisper.
He laughs, like he can’t help himself. It’s not the first time I get the impression laughing isn’t something Dallas Wilder does all that often and he’s surprised to find himself doing it.
It’s simply the most magical experience I’ve ever had. And we’re barely above the rooftops.
Then we climb and it’s like being inside a space-age bubble high above the world. The sun is a big hazy glow in the gauzy sky and I’m in love with all of it. With the blur of the propellor that’s moving so fast you can’t even see it. With him. With life itself.
From the air, New Orleans is a crescent of green and rustand silver, held in the arms of the glinting, muddy river. “It’ssobeautiful.” My city brings tears to my eyes.
“There,” he points out. “Look, it’s the Quarter.”
We fly over the French Quarter and it looks so charming and quaint from up here. “I can see the hotel!” I know which one it is because the White Swan has a white logo on their black roof. Three roofs southwest, I can see the wrought-iron balcony off Room 22 that’s in need of a paint job. Our roof is a rusty gray.
The whole scene is blurry because it feels sogoodto be away from the hotel and the bittersweet memories that are so much a part of my daily life, but I also miss it like a regular person might miss their mother. In a way, the hotel might as wellbemy mother. I never knew my own. The sounds and the smells and the people who came and went raised me. I’ve spent my whole life inside her. My hotel and my identity were always one and the same.
Seeing her from this vantage point is liberating but at the same time sad, like the cord between us has finally been severed. She doesn’t need me anymore. An indifferent billionaire from Houston and four capable temps were all it took to break what little bond we have left. And I reallydo: I want to experience other things in my life besides the daily grind inside those four oh-so-familiar walls.
