Chapter 27

CHAPTER 27

Brandon

“Yes?” I answer the room phone with a dry mouth.

The relentless sun is pouring in through the sliding glass doors that open onto the balcony, filling the suite with too much brightness. My head is brewing up the pounding ache that I haven’t been able to shift since Ruby Island, like stale beer with a fresh batch of hops added.

I need water. Instead, I tip a small shot of brandy into a crystal glass and knock it back, the liquid doing nothing to ease the scratchiness in the back of my throat.

“Good morning, sir,” comes the efficient voice on the other end of the phone. “There is someone in the lobby to see you.”

“To see me?” I rub my hands through my hair. Peer down at my creased pants, bare feet, and untucked shirt. “Who is it?”

“I’m not at liberty to say, sir.”

“Did they—” There’s a click, and the low hum of an ended call.

I wander into the bathroom and splash my face with cold water—it does nothing to alter the fact that I clearly didn’t sleep last night. I guess the concierges in Vegas are used to their visitors arriving looking refreshed and leaving with puffy pouches under their eyes and tired skin.

Five minutes later, I exit the elevator on the ground level wearing a jersey sweater, clean pants, and shoes, and with my hair combed, wishing I’d taken the time to drink a glass of water first. What if Rose is waiting for me? She’ll be even more reluctant to hear out my version of events while I’m in this state.

My smile fades as I approach the sleek front desk and Rose isn’t there.

“How can I help you, sir?” The concierge’s smile is fixed in place; he has a faint accent I never noticed before.

“Someone is waiting to see me?”

His eyes narrow briefly—he covers it up by casting his gaze onto the computer screen, scanning recent correspondence. “No, sir. I’ve no record of any guests requesting to see you.”

“You called my suite about—” I check my wristwatch “—ten minutes ago.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t call you. Perhaps it was my assistant. Are you happy to wait here while I ask--?”

I don’t wait around. I head outside to the teardrop driveway outside the entrance. New arrivals are climbing out of cabs while the bellhops wait with tall gold trolleys to collect their luggage. There’s no sign of Rose.

I was clutching at straws. Rose would’ve taken the elevator straight up to our suite—she wouldn’t leave an anonymous message with the concierge asking me to come down to the lobby. Would she? Unless that’s exactly what she wanted—me out of the room so that she could collect her stuff without us coming face to face.

Pulse racing, I head back inside. I need to speak to her, even if this is the last opportunity I ever have, I want to tell her that the wager was a huge mistake, something I should never have gone along with, and that I’m sorry.

The first thing I hear when I let myself back into the room is the sound of running water. I dash straight into the bathroom and find Rose in the shower.

My heart somersaults. She came back.

I don’t even consider that she might not be staying. She came back. She has given me the opportunity to tell her how I feel, and I’m not going to waste it.

She turns to look at me, water dripping down her naked body. She scrapes wet hair away from her face. Her eyes are huge with tears, and I toe off my shoes and join her in the shower, pulling her into my arms.

“Hey, it’s all right, Rose,” I murmur to the top of her head as she sobs against my chest. “Everything is going to be alright, I promise.”

Her body judders with emotions that she obviously can’t contain, and I hold her, stroking her hair, and whispering, over and over, that she’s going to be alright because I’m there.

“I’ve got you, Rose. I’ve got you.”

Finally, when she’s calm, I release her and pull away so that I can see her face. She sucks on her bottom lip and peers at me from beneath wet eyelashes. “You’re wet.”

I smile. “So are you.”

She nods and reaches for the hem of my sweater.

I grab her hands and stop her. “Rose, do you want to talk about it?”

“Later.”

She tugs my sweater over my head and tosses it onto the marble-tiled bathroom floor, and this time I don’t stop her. My pants follow. I cup her face in my hands and kiss every part of it, starting with her eyelids and making my way down to her earlobes, the base of her throat, her erect nipples.

She watches me trace a line with my tongue down between her breasts to her abdomen and stopping between her legs. Water cascades over both of us, collecting on her eyelashes like tiny diamonds. My gaze instinctively drifts to her hand, and my hard-on grows even more erect when I spot the engagement ring.

Gripping her thighs, I force her legs apart and insert my tongue. She leans back against the side of the shower cubicle, thrusts herself onto me, demanding more. But I take my time, finding the spot and teasing her slowly, dragging my tongue across it until I can hear her panting over the sound of gushing water.

When she explodes on my tongue, I stand up and kiss her, enjoying the way she sucks her taste off me, eager to experience all of it. And it strikes me then, how lucky she is—every experience is a first.

I pick her up, and she wraps her legs around my waist. “Ready?”

“Ready.” Her warm breath on my ear sends shivers traveling down my spine.

Raising her butt, I slide her slowly down onto my wet cock. She groans out loud, eyes closed, arms wrapped around my neck.

She kisses me slowly at first, still savoring her own taste, her nipples burning holes in my saturated chest. Then she starts moving, squeezing her pussy tightly around me as she shifts her body upwards, using the shower wall for support. She almost slides off me, rubbing the head of my cock against her before lowering herself all the way again, gasping when my length fills her up.

I kiss her harder. I want it to last, but desire is clouding any willpower I might’ve had. Gripping her thighs, I help her ride me, filling her mouth with my tongue, steam billowing around us.

Until my legs start trembling. She rides me harder, faster, her breasts pressed against my chest, her tongue pushing back on mine. My entire body shudders against her, my hips thrusting even when my orgasm slows to a wet sticky halt.

I want to stay inside her. I need to stay inside her, and Rose must sense it too, because she clenches her pussy around me and groans out loud when she unwittingly squeezes me out.

“Sorry,” she whispers, a wistful smile on her face.

“Don’t ever be sorry for that, Rose.”

She giggles then, and I lower her gently to the floor, her arms still wrapped around my neck. Rose kisses my cheek and releases me, watching me almost bashfully, like she doesn’t understand what just happened.

“Can I wash you?” I ask.

Her smile sets her face aglow, and she nods, watching my every move as I pour shower gel into my hands and lather her body starting with her neck and working my way down. I spread her thighs gently, careful not to irritate the swollen flesh between her legs.

I wash her hair with shampoo, rubbing it gently between my hands and massaging her scalp until she shudders with pleasure. “Do you like that?”

“Uh-huh. Where did you learn to do that?”

I don’t tell her that I’ve never done this before, with anyone—I’m aware that we have only delayed the serious conversation about the wager, and I don’t want her to think that I’m trying to butter her up.

I rinse off the soap, turning her around and smiling back at her when she watches me with those huge unforgettable eyes.

“Your turn.” She reaches for the shower gel before I can stop her.

Wrapping a robe around Rose when she steps out of the shower is quite possibly the most intimate moment that I’ve ever shared with anyone. If I could bottle that feeling, I could make billions from it.

We sit on the balcony with room service brunch: gravadlax and scrambled eggs with toasted bagels, fresh yogurt and berries. We drink coffee, and sip mimosas from crystal flutes. Rose slides the orange segment from the rim of her glass and sucks the pulp from it, licking the rind until there’s no fleshy fruit left.

“What?” She arches a perfect eyebrow. “Don’t you like fresh oranges?”

“I don’t dislike them.”

“Whoa, could you climb any higher onto that fence?”

She chuckles, and I eat my own orange segment to prove a point, when what I’m really doing is denying that I just shared something personal with her without getting struck by lightning or watching my whole life pass before my eyes.

“I spoke to Damon.” I kickstart the conversation; I’ve always found it easier to confront the difficult topics head-on before they manifest into something monstrous and get blown all out of proportion.

She peers out across the balcony at the Palazzo, squinting at the sun which is turning the tip of her nose pink. “I needed space.”

She looks at me then, and although I want to know where she spent the night, it’s more important to me that she feels safe now that she’s back.

“It’s always been that way between me and Damon—everything is a competition, a battle, a prize to be fought over.”

Her eyes grow huge with tears, and I set my glass down on the table and reach for her hand. At least she doesn’t pull away.

I twist the diamond ring around her finger and make a mental note to get it made smaller. “Whatever he told you, the wager was his idea. I know I should’ve shut it down before it went anywhere,” I add when she opens her mouth to speak, “and that’s my bad. But I honestly didn’t believe that he stood a chance.”

“Of cracking me?” She shakes her head. “Damon’s words.”

I rub my hand across the stubble on my chin and picture myself with my face buried between her legs. “Honestly, I knew that you were too good for him. I knew you’d be horrified that he would even try with Kelly and the kids there.”

She sucks in a deep breath and looks at me. “Has he always cheated on her? Or were they happy to begin with?”

I down my mimosa and refill my coffee cup with the steaming black liquid. I’ve not had enough caffeine yet to soak up the brandy. “I don’t know. I … avoid them whenever possible.”

She’s quiet, and I remind myself that this is what I wanted, the chance to tell my side of the story. This isn’t about Damon and Kelly.

“Why did you agree to it then?”

“I guess because there’s always a part of me that doesn’t want to appear weak, especially where my brother is concerned.”

“Why? What has he done to make you feel this way?”

I shake my head. “It isn’t so much what Damon has done.”

“Who then?” Her eyes are boring into me like she can see right inside my skull to the thoughts scrambling backwards to resume their hiding place.

She picks up her coffee cup, instinctively tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, and I notice the faint bruises around her neck.

“Did I do that?” I slosh coffee over my fingers in my haste to set it back down on the table.

“What?” She follows my gaze to her neck and quickly tugs her hair back over her shoulder to cover the marks. “No. It’s nothing.”

“The other night. I was drunk. Did I… Did I hurt you, Rose?”

We were both drunk. She wanted it as badly as I did. It didn’t occur to me until now that I might’ve pushed things too far. My breakfast starts churning inside my gut.

“No, Brandon.” But she doesn’t look at me, and that’s all I need to know.

I drop onto my knees beside her seat, and take her hand in mine, the diamond hard and cold to touch. “I’m so sorry, Rose. I never wanted to hurt you.”

“I…” She shakes her head and tries to withdraw her hand, but I don’t let go.

“Please believe me, Rose. I would never willingly hurt you. If I did that during sex… Well, I promise it won’t happen again.”

She swallows hard. When she speaks, her voice is tiny, a fragile thing that I could snap between my hands with zero effort, and the responsibility weighs heavy on my shoulders.

“You didn’t do anything that I didn’t want you to do, Brandon.”

Even so, she trusted me enough to agree to this crazy situation, and I’ve let her down, massively. “Do you want to go back to New York?”

“What?” she blinks back tears and peers at the people lounging by the pools below. “No. I… We’re on our honeymoon, remember?” She attempts a smile.

“Somewhere else then? Get away from here, start afresh.”

“Brandon, I don’t need to get away from here. I-I just want to be with you. It doesn’t matter where we are.”

I raise her hand to my lips and kiss it, just like in the old movies my mom used to watch from an era when guys were gentlemen who took their dates to dance halls, and gossip was little more than the neighbor who forgot to sweep her porch. “Whatever you want, Rose. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

Her face is glowing again, alive, happy, and I realize that this is the Rose I want to see more of. “No more wagers then, Brandon. No more secrets.”

I rise and go back to my seat, finishing my coffee and peering down at the perfect blue pools below. “Pool loungers today?”

“Yep. Casino tonight? We’re in Vegas, and I haven’t even seen a roulette table.”

“Roulette table it is, but if I spot the telltale signs of addiction in those beautiful eyes, I’m dragging you outside kicking and screaming.”

A blush creeps into her cheeks, and I’m not sure if it’s because I mentioned her beautiful eyes or if she too had a mental image of me binding her ankles to the headboard.

“Brandon, I saw the photos.”

No more secrets . “Not my finest look.” I try to downplay them—I can’t exactly ask her what she thought of seeing me naked with another woman. I know how I would feel if the tables were turned.

I try to swallow the uneasiness creeping through my veins. Jealousy has never been in my vocabulary before Rose, but my fists instinctively clench at a mental image of Damon and Rose on Ruby Island if she’d chosen my brother over me. It’s our island—mine and Rose’s—Swimming Beach is ours too.

“I-I know what you’re up against, Brandon.”

Of course she does—she read the email. “I can handle it, Rose. You don’t need to worry about it.”

“But I do.” She flashes the diamond at me, and it catches the sunshine, casting prisms of light across the balcony. “You jump. I jump.” At my vacant expression, she adds, “It’s from Titanic .” Pause. “You must’ve seen Titanic . The movie?”

I grimace. “I don’t get a lot of time to watch movies.”

“Okay, does this hotel have a private cinema room?”

“You want to watch a movie instead of trying out the pool loungers?”

“We can do both. We’re on our honeymoon, Brandon. Vegas is our oyster, or something like that.” She grins at me. “Seriously though, whatever the photos were all about, can’t you just go back and press the reset button?”

I hang my head. “It isn’t that simple.”

“This has something to do with Ron Valentine, doesn’t it?”

She’s observant. Where did she pick up on this? Outside the Blond Giraffe—I answer my own question.

“Is it too late, Brandon?”

“Too late?”

“To reconsider whatever arrangement you have with Ron?”

What’s the motto I’ve always worked by: it’s never too late? Why am I so irked that Rose is paying attention to what I do? Is it because I haven’t had time to wholly trust her, or is this whole ‘a man is an island’ thing so deep-rooted that I can’t break through the surface to view the sunshine?

“The damage is already done. Even if I have the photographs pulled right this instant, people will always remember them.”

“Give them something else to remember.”

“I thought that’s what we were doing.”

Her expression falters, and I feel an instant pang of guilt. “I’m sorry, Rose. I didn’t mean it to sound like that’s all this is to me.”

“What is it to you, Brandon?” She sits forward, her eyes so large and hopeful that I could get lost in them.

What is it to me? I’m still trying to figure it out, but I do know that I’m not prepared to walk away from the fake marriage without a backward glance.

Before I can answer, my phone rings from somewhere inside the room. I hunt around for it and find it in the pocket of my wet pants that are still in a heap on the bathroom floor.

I hit the green button. “Mom, I can’t talk right now.”

“Brandon, it’s your father. He’s had a heart attack.”