Page 106 of The VIP Doubles Down
“How do you ever make it right?” Gavin didn’t know, but Allie would, and she had promised to come with him. The tension pounding at his temples eased.
That was the effect just thinking of Allie had on him. She was like a healing balm on his old wounds.
“Don’t let pride get in your way,” Nathan said, his voice filled with regret. “It’s the great destroyer.”
“Or fear,” Luke said. “You think you want to avoid getting hurt, but that’s no way to live, man.”
Gavin knew the two men spoke from their own hard-won experience, so he weighed their words instead of dismissing them with a sarcastic comment. Pride and fear were emotions he had become far too comfortable with. Yet when he was with Allie, they skittered away to cower in a far corner of his mind.
He straightened in his chair and turned back to Luke.
“You’re right,” Gavin said. “I’m an idiot.”
Chapter 27
“You know what I want to do right now?” Gavin asked, tugging on one of Allie’s carefully coiled ringlets in the dimly lit luxury of the Bentley’s backseat. “Tell Jaros to turn the car around and go home so I can wrinkle the hell out of that pretty dress while I make love to you.”
Allie laughed, even as desire lapped at her. “All this work to look beautiful, and you just want to mess it up?”
“The irony has always struck me.” He moved aside her hair and laid his lips against her neck, his touch radiating through her. “Women spend immense amounts of time dressing up for men, and men would rather they just took it all off.”
“Ha! That’s where you’re wrong. We dress up for ourselves. If men like how we look, that’s because we are projecting self-confidence.”
He took her earlobe between his teeth, letting her feel just the tiniest pressure before he let go. “So I’ve been flattering myself all these years that the fair sex is preening for me.”
“Depends on what they’re wearing. Some clothes are meant for male appreciation.”
A chuckle rumbled in his throat. “Like the dress you wore to meet me at the door of your apartment.”
Allie tilted her head sideways so he could kiss behind her ear and send shivers down to swirl around her tightening nipples. “Those are made to tantalize.”
“And to be removed as swiftly as possible.” He brushed his thumb against the bare skin of her cleavage.
“Gavin, this dress is not that kind. It takes a lot of work to get it off and on.”
“Then we won’t take it off,” he said, leaning down to work his hand under the long skirt and stroke up her bare thigh to her panties. He’d been touching her more than usual ever since they’d returned from Chloe and Nathan’s house, which made her wonder what he and his friends had talked about.
“You’re taking advantage of the fact that you look gorgeous in a tuxedo,” Allie said, remembering the moment she walked down the stairs in her ball regalia to find Gavin standing in the entrance foyer in his tux. His hair had been tamed into smooth waves that flowed neatly back from his face. The brilliant white of the pleated shirt with a wink of diamond-and-onyx studs contrasted with the black of the supple, perfectly tailored wool draped over the breadth of his shoulders. The tux jacket followed the nip of his waist and drew the eye to his long, elegant legs accented with the satin side stripe. When she reached his feet, she had burst out laughing. He was wearing well-weathered boat shoes. He had grinned and said, “Easy on, easy off.”
Her mind was brought back to the present when he found the edge of the lace between her legs and slid his finger under it. “Men wear tuxedos purely for the effect they have on women,” he admitted.
Allie’s already weakened willpower deserted her, and she opened her thighs for him, letting her head fall back as his fingertip glided downward. He dipped inside her to wet his skin, then massaged the most sensitive spot on her body until she moaned and arched against his hand. He thrust inside her with first one and then two fingers. Little nips at her neck sent spikes of sharpness down to where he worked her with his fingers and thumb, until she bowed up from the leather seat while her internal muscles clamped around him in a convulsion of exquisite release.
When she sank back down on the seat and opened her eyes, he slipped his fingers out of her and sucked them into his mouth, his eyes glittering in the semidarkness. “I could live on nothing but the taste of you,” he said before his gaze swept over her. “And the look of you after you come.”
She followed his glance to see the front of her skirt rucked up to her waist, while her thighs were splayed open and her nude lace panties showed a damp spot. She tugged her skirt down. “I look like Cinderella in a porno flick.”
Gavin threw back his head and gave a full-throated laugh. “If it were a porno flick, your two stepsisters would be in the car with us.”
“Because for men, it’s all about quantity, not quality,” Allie said, smoothing the fabric over her knees.
“Precisely. I want to make love to you at least a dozen times a day.” He put his arm around her and pulled her against him.
She snuggled in with a happy purr. “You’d never get any writing done.”
“I’ll prop my laptop on the curve of your deliciously round bottom and type while we rest between bouts.”
“So I’ll be a sex toy and a desk.”
