Chapter Twenty-Nine
Cassidy
That martini replaced my blood with sugar, I’m almost certain.
It was the size of my head. I made it three-quarters of the way through before I had to tap out. I waited for Luke to finish my syrupy leftovers before scooping out a liquor-soaked gummy bear for sampling.
I absorb the energy of the crowd as we move through the promenade. Neon, it turns out, is my favorite color. Neon and stolen Vegas hours with Luke make me feel alive.
Luke insists we ride the High Roller next, a modern Ferris wheel with enclosed pods, offering 360-degree views of the city as it takes you through the sky on a large, slow rotation.
In the lobby, we argue over who will buy tickets for three straight minutes before I let Luke win.
He slides his card across the counter. “We’ll do the Happy Half Hour. Is it too late for the ten o’clock?”
“Nope! Perfect timing.”
We hurry toward the pod’s boarding platform, and I steal another look at the sign above the checkout with all the prices. “You don’t drink, really. Why did you choose the open bar pod?”
His fingers brush the bare skin between my shoulder blades, igniting a blaze. “I have a theory. We’ll see if it’s correct.”
He ushers me over the threshold with a hand to the small of my back. A bartender behind a tiny counter covered in liquor bottles greets us with a broad smile.
Within two minutes, our unit is packed to capacity—twenty-five people. They eagerly crowd the bar like sharks.
Luke ducks down to whisper in my ear as we move to the other side of the sphere. “The goal of a happy hour pod, as I learned at that terrible bachelor’s party, is to try and drink your money’s worth. These people will be so busy getting drunk, they’ll barely notice anything else. It’ll feel like we have privacy.”
“Like a date. With twenty something of our closest friends getting hammered in our periphery.”
He orients me toward the glass wall and circles his arms around my waist. “As far as I’m concerned, this is the only thing that exists right now.”
When his mouth finds my neck, I get the impression he doesn’t just mean the view. I melt in his arms, my back against his chest.
The lights in the pod fade to nothing apart from a single blue neon runner haloing the top of the sphere. Luke was right: in the darkness, it’s only us and the view. The loud hum of noise and faint music makes me feel like I could say anything and only he’d hear. The excitement of drinking and whatever event they’re all a part of means no one pays attention to us.
We ascend, slow and smooth. I didn’t know I had a space carved out in my heart for Las Vegas until I saw it from the air. Now that I’ve glimpsed the glittering blue, red, and soft white lights sparkling across the city, I’ll compare everything to this.
Luke’s warm breath on my ear prompts an answering tug in my core. “What do you think?”
“I think this was a very good idea.”
Minutes pass as he holds me to his chest, lifting an arm to point out landmarks every now and then. We talk about everyday things, the mundane that feels anything but when it’s affiliated with him. I make him describe his house, and I do the same until he’s cackling at the level of specificity in my answer. We discover we’ve been to some of the same hole-in-the-wall restaurants in west L.A. He hums triumphantly in my ear at this, as if to say, See? We fit.
“I’ll cook for you,” he whispers, breath fanning my neck. “Soon. Somewhere.”
My pulse quickens. “Will you wear my frilly apron?”
“I’ll wear anything you want, if you’ll do the same.” He loosens his hold, and I fear he’ll let me go when his right hand moves to my hip. His palm moves in small, slow circles. My dress moves with him, rubbing against my skin. The friction ignites a simmer in my blood.
It’s so short all he’d have to do is lift it a few inches and I’d be exposed.
The back of my head falls against his chest and settles in that crook that feels made for it.
His hand slides lower, stopping just above the hem. Bunching the fabric lightly, but not lifting. Innocent, but not at all. A hard breath leaves my mouth. Our weight shifts forward, together, until I’m almost pressed against the glass.
“Tell me something else,” he murmurs, walking his fingers inward until his hand rests on the front of my thigh. “Anything you want.”
Laughter swells in the background.
“I, um…went to UCLA.”
His fingertips move inward, dangerously close to the inner edge of my thigh. I throb, willing him to move three inches farther. Knowing we shouldn’t. My skin flushes and I try, and fail, to focus on a building in the distance.
The world might as well not exist.
The coarse edge to his whisper, the slight tremble of his hand, lets me know he’s here with me, grappling with the sharp edge of control. “What was college Cassidy like?”
“Never broke her self-imposed curfew.” I suck in a shaky breath as his fingers drift closer.
His right hand works on my leg while the other anchors on my stomach. It’s not enough. I crave his weight, contact everywhere. I subtly arch my back, and his hardness presses into me. He shifts his hips, diminishing the contact.
I reel him in with my fingers hooked in his pocket until I feel him again, the blunt, demanding ridge against my back. I sneak a hand between us and grip him once. Even just feeling him through his jeans makes his whole body tense. He swears into the sensitive skin of my temple as my hand drops away.
More than the desperate ache he sparks in me, or the thrill of what we’re doing and where, I love knowing I can do this to him. He makes me feel so fucking desired.
He risks one touch between my legs, one single press, and it hits like a nuclear blast. I can’t react, can’t make a sound, can only close my eyes as his hand moves away.
I place one palm on the glass, pretending to observe the buildings speckling the horizon.
“You like this?” His voice is lust and gravel. “Knowing how worked up you get me?”
Breathless, I nod.
He skates his hand beneath my chest now, thumb brushing the underside of my sensitive breasts through my dress. He’s finding new ways to tease and test. My nipples strain against the no-nothing fabric of this dress.
“Not feeling chatty?” He tugs my ear with his teeth. “What happened to my Cass?”
I twist my head to see him, and he cranes his neck to catch my eye. The intimacy of his face an inch from mine while my back is flush with his body, his arm bracketing me to keep me close, is a different kind of jolt. He’s washed in the faintest neon blue, his face shadowed. What I wanted to say—you’re a tease, two can play at that game—falls away. His mouth closes over mine. I expect a brief kiss, maybe even a chaste one since technically people do exist in this place, but it’s anything but. His tongue plunders me as his hand rests on my throat to keep me tilted just right. His thumb rubs a small circle over where my pulse rages against my skin.
I break away, gasping as I drag my attention back on the window. I catch the faintest trace of our reflection, my swollen lips, his face in my hair. His hands bracket my hips and squeeze, and I’m sure we’re both thinking about how easy it’d be for him to bend me over, for my palms to brace on the glass as I hinge forward.
One touch. He’s pressed me once, like a button, yet the ache still builds and builds. I’m slick between my thighs as I cross my legs for some kind of relief.
“What would you do to me?” I whisper. “If we were alone?”
“I’d lay you down, spread those perfect legs, and take my time learning you with my tongue. Figuring out what you like. It wouldn’t take me long because you’d let me know, wouldn’t you? You’d feed me your little sounds.”
“I bet you know just what to do.” My voice tinged in desperation. I’m so strung out his words almost feel like enough. “So attentive.”
He toys with the strap of my dress. It would fall with the faintest nudge.
“Then what?” I beg.
“After you came on my mouth, I’d climb up your body and let you taste yourself.”
A furious blush breaks over my skin, which barely registers for how hot I already burn.
“Have you ever?” He traces a finger over my lips. Turns the bottom one out and lets it snap back into place. Traces my cupid’s bow. “Tasted yourself?”
For all the talking I normally do, I can’t find a word. I shake my head no. I can’t think of a single thing I’ve ever done. Him tweaking my mouth and teasing me on this ride feels more like sex than any I’ve actually had. I lick the tip of his finger. “What if I taste you, instead?”
He falters, pulling me harder against him. We could be hugging, in this hold, but I can’t explain away his mouth latched on my neck, sucking until I’m sure it’s marked. There’s no excuse for his finger tracing the neckline of my dress, the swell of my breast. “You were created in a lab to torture me.” His voice is strained. At least we’re both suffering. “I’m about to get us arrested.”
“What else?” My heartbeat thunders in my ears. “If we were alone, nothing holding us back—”
“I want to rip this dress off and press your perfect tits against the glass. I want to show you off to the whole goddamn city as I fuck you. I’d make sure they heard you, too.”
I swallow my moan as I dig my nails into his arm.
The lights flicker in the pod.
He removes his hold on me and runs his hand through his hair, down his face, like he has a hundred times before.
My body riots with panic. “Wait, is that it? Is the ride over?”
“Time flies when you’re having fun.”
I wheel around and press my hands to his chest. “I don’t want that to be it. I’m not ready to go.”
He circles my wrists. “Up for one more place?”
I’ll take one more of anything with him. While I can.
He leads me to our next place with a hand clasped around mine.
“Since you seem to like views a lot,” he says, a cheeky grin on his face as he tugs me into the Paris Tower’s lobby, “I thought we’d head up.”
We barely have to wait for an elevator. I watch the electric city as we fly up in our golden cage, the lattice of the tower flashing through the glass doors at even intervals.
Luke watches me watching the city.
The pads of his fingers graze my jaw, drift over my cheeks like he’s memorizing me. I’m committing the way he feels to memory, too, the way his touch sparks my skin.
I give up on the view and burrow into him. His hands move through my hair, achingly tender.
He tilts my head back. “I never expected this.” Vulnerability flashes in his eyes. I want to build a cage around that, too, and protect it. “I can’t believe you’re real.”
I cradle his face in my hands, guiding his gaze back to me as it tries to run away. “I feel so much I don’t know what to do with it.”
“As a general rule”—his mouth hovers near mine, and we share a breath—“I avoid feeling much of anything. But you make it so goddamn easy.”
Anyone can kiss. What we do this time is different. It’s an offering disguised as a tangling of tongues. It’s a reverent and sure sweep of our mouths. It erases the last whispers of doubt and fear that this is too good to be true.
When we step onto the Eiffel Tower observation deck, it’s dark to let the city shine. And empty.
Just for us.