Room Service Read online

  When she came this time, she stiffened all over, the tightly wound coil of arousal springing fast and hard. She felt it everywhere, pleasure radiating out from that center point in hot, languid waves. And then Rhys was there, covering her from head to toe, kissing her throat, her breasts, his hands stroking her hips as she shuddered.

  “Come inside me,” she whispered. “Right now. Please.”

  “With pleasure, love.” When he climbed off the bed and disappeared, she blinked in confusion, but he returned carrying a condom apparently retrieved from his jeans pocket.

  And he’d shucked off his briefs in the process.

  He was magnificently erect, and she sucked in a breath as he climbed onto the bed again. It was beautiful, she thought with a kind of wonder. She couldn’t remember ever really looking at an erection before, but Rhys’s was gorgeous, so proud, so hard, a dark blue vein running its length and pulsing with arousal.

  Without thinking, she reached out to curl her fingers around it, and he groaned in approval. “Ah, God, love, I’ve been waiting for that.”

  She found his eyes darkened nearly to charcoal, smoky with need, but he stopped her when she began to stroke him. “But I can’t wait to be inside you. No bloody way.”

  She took the condom before he could protest, and her hands shook only slightly as she unwrapped it and slid the slippery rubber over his erection. It fit snugly, and the moment it was on, he nudged her backward.

  As if they’d known each other forever, she thought with a sudden spear of joy. So natural, so right, as if they were meant to be, just like in the fairy tales…

  But there was no time to consider that possibility further. She opened her legs as he lowered himself toward her, and then he thrust inside in one smooth motion. Oh God, he’d gone so deep, filling her so totally, she groaned out loud and wrapped her legs around his waist.

  He answered with an incoherent grunt, thrusting deeper, slowly, as if savoring each plunge inside.

  She had to see his face, watch him as he’d watched her. Wriggling her arms free, she took his head between her hands, angling his face toward her, and found his eyes nearly black with pleasure.

  He gazed at her for a long moment, then lowered his head to kiss her, hungry and hot and hard. She could live on his kisses, she thought, moving her mouth beneath his, tasting his tongue as it slid against hers. They were like…well, like life. Raw and passionate and real.

  But then he was thrusting faster, even deeper, touching a place inside her she hadn’t known existed. When he reared back, tearing his mouth away from hers, she was ready, thrusting up to meet him. With a strangled roar, he came, and a moment later buried his face in the hollow of her neck, raining kisses there.

  The last electric ripples of sensation were still fading away when he finally raised his face to hers, and she smiled at him.

  “I’ll trade dinner for that any day,” she whispered, and grinned when he threw his head back and laughed.

  So much for getting Olivia out of his system, Rhys thought hours later. He was spooned against her back in her cozy bed, lazily stroking her breasts and belly as she dozed. Once hadn’t been enough. Twice, it turned out, hadn’t even been close. He was fairly certain three times would only be the beginning.

  A bit scary, that. What was even scarier was that, if anything, the ruin of his surprise room service meal had probably seduced Olivia into his arms more quickly than sharing supper with her would have.

  His groin tightened at the thought of her in the kitchen earlier, her mouth soft and sweet as he bent to kiss her the first time, her eyes gone dreamy and hot as he spoke to her.

  And then that wet gray sweater, clinging to her torso, outlining the gorgeous shape of her breasts…

  He grunted, shifting closer to her, stroking one swollen nipple with his thumb and breathing in the scent of her hair. Not enough, no. He wanted her again, right now.

  She’d nearly passed out after the second go-round, limp with the force of an orgasm that had shuddered through her from head to toe, her brow damp and her cheeks flushed a brilliant rose. Asleep now, she looked like nothing so much as a princess, a cloud of hair spread on the pillowcase, her lips pink and plump from all of the kissing, her creamy skin smooth and bare beneath the sheet.

  A princess. There he went again, spouting fairy tale nonsense like a sodding lunatic. What was with this bloody hotel? The place—or perhaps the woman—had cast some sort of spell on him.

  No! No spells. Bollocks, he was going to be on the analyst’s couch before this was over. If only to figure out how it was that he ended up on his bum or stuck in a closet or soaked to the skin whenever he was within five feet of Olivia. If he’d fancied himself as Superman, she was clearly his kryptonite. He’d never felt less suave in his life.

  And yet, making love to her had been so bloody right. The taste of her on his tongue, the feel of her in his hands, the gorgeous little sighs she breathed when he was stroking her, kissing her, as if he’d given her a gift, woken her from some lush, drowsy daze…. There would never be enough of that, no sir. Not even close.

  But sometime it would have to be enough, wouldn’t it? Running a hand through his hair, Rhys edged away from her, settling the sheet over her before climbing out of bed. He needed to pee. He needed to get a grip on himself, that was what he needed. He wasn’t going to be in New York for more than a few weeks, and he wasn’t the sort to make false promises. Honesty, that was his motto. It was just a bit of a shock that, honestly, he was no less fascinated by Olivia than he had been earlier tonight.

  Striding across the apartment to the loo, he stopped for a moment to glance around him. She’d taken a studio efficiency, one generous room with the bath at the back and the kitchen along one wall. Compact and cozy, it somehow looked just like her.

  The furniture was more old world than simply old, dark chestnut and walnut stuff that was quite clearly solid wood. Framed prints he thought were Maxfield Parrish’s work were hung over a loveseat in one corner of the room, all dreamy blues and pale gold and pink light. More fairy tales, he thought with a rueful smile.

  A cat he hadn’t noticed before wound around his ankles, long pale fur like velvet. Without warning the beast leapt from the carpet to Olivia’s small desk, where a very modern laptop looked out of place among the silver-framed photos and an antique lamp. Photos of the hotel, he saw when he inched closer and squinted in the darkness.

  Everything in Olivia’s life was about the hotel, wasn’t it? Callender House as it had been in years past, and as she seemed determined to keep it even now. A shame that there wasn’t more of “her” about the place, because beneath the cashmere sweater sets and sensible pearl earrings, she was a good deal more passionate and, hell, even a bit funkier than he’d expected.

  But wait, there was some proof of it, he thought, crossing the room to the loveseat, where a beaded purple Indian pillow rested on the very proper Victorian settee. And there, on the wall leading to the bath, a very stark, elegant piece of black-and-white photography, which was unsigned. Olivia may have been a princess in a tower, but she was one who had access to the Internet and liked to look out the window once in a while.

  He used the loo and came out to find her sitting up in the bed, her hair spilled over her shoulders and the cat busily washing her hindquarters from Rhys’s side of the bed.

  “Eloise will move,” Olivia assured him as he approached, one eyebrow cocked at the feline. “I mean, you are coming back to bed, aren’t you?”

  “Where else would I go, love?” Eloise, all offended dignity, sprang off the bed as he climbed in and stalked toward the kitchen. “Just had to find the loo, that’s all.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  Even in the dim light, Rhys could tell she was blushing. As if they hadn’t just fucked each other into incoherence, bare-ass naked and groaning. What she had to be embarrassed or shy about now was anyone’s guess.

  But the fact that she was tentative with him now produced an unfamiliar stab
of protectiveness. He didn’t want her shy, not with him, and he certainly didn’t want her embarrassed. Hell, at the moment he wanted everything she felt to be either sunshine and kittens or more of the lusty hunger he’d witnessed earlier.

  “I’m not the type to fuck and run,” he murmured, propped up on one elbow so he could kiss her bare shoulder.

  She blushed deeper at the curse word—he could feel the heat in her cheeks—but she didn’t protest.

  Which was good. He wasn’t about to change his stripes, and that included the ones on his tongue. And he wasn’t about to lie, either. He swore like a sailor, but he didn’t fuck and run, never had—he figured if he fancied a woman enough to crawl between her legs, spending the night in her bed, or his, was a given. Then again, he wasn’t exactly the type to sign on for a committed relationship on day one, either.

  But they weren’t talking about that, were they? Not yet anyway.

  She shifted closer to him, sliding down the pillows as he reached for her breasts. Soft everywhere, that was Olivia, soft and lush and ripe as a good peach. As she relaxed into his touch, he said idly, “I saw your laptop over there. A gift, was it?”

  She snorted. “God, no. I picked it out myself. The computers in this place are…well, ‘original’ wouldn’t really be the wrong word. I wanted something fast and something with a lot of memory.”

  Interesting. He toyed with a thick lock of hair that had fallen across her throat. “And the picture there in the hall? The photo? Is that a new artist?”

  This time she laughed. “Only if you consider me to be an artist, which I certainly don’t. I was just fooling around with the camera one day, and I liked the way that shot came out. It’s from the Central Park carousel.”

  Huh. A quite adult shot of a childhood pleasure, then. He looped her hair over her ear and bent to kiss her cheek. “You’re a fascinating woman, Olivia Callender.”

  That flustered her. “Am I?”

  “You are indeed,” he assured, gently angling her onto her back. “I think the world needs a bit more of you.”

  “The…world?” Her voice had gone breathless as he lowered his mouth to her breast, and his hand to the inside of one warm thigh.

  “Certainly,” he whispered, glancing up into her dark eyes with an honesty that was disconcertingly fierce, even for him. “The world, and me.”

  Chapter 8

  A t ten minutes after six the next morning, Olivia was awake. Wide awake. So awake she wasn’t even in a rush to make coffee, which was a little weird. She was actually impatient for the sun to rise.

  She should have been unconscious. Possibly comatose. She’d never made love like that, so many times, in one night. Come to think of it, she’d never made love like that period. Not until she was limp and boneless, positively sated with pleasure and the new and delicious privilege of a man’s body to explore any way she liked, for as long as she liked.

  She definitely should have been comatose.

  Instead, she was more awake than she ever had been in her life. Wide awake, as if every nerve ending and blood cell had been pumped full of caffeine. Not only that, but everything looked clearer, smelled sharper, sounded louder. The cat mewling for water, for instance. The ghost of perfume from the top of her dresser. The ratty old upholstery on the easy chair that faced the TV.

  Hmmm. It was a strange feeling, unsettling, but…good. Of course, it would have been better if Rhys had been awake, since then they could make love again, but she had a feeling he wasn’t a six A.M. kind of person. Actually, she’d bet folding money that he didn’t even know six A.M. existed, being a chef and therefore probably a night person.

  Wow. Her brain was wide awake, too. She didn’t usually think this fast. If she’d been speaking out loud, she would have told herself to slow down.

  She’d already gotten up to use the bathroom, brushing her teeth and her hair, and had taken her single sexy nightgown from the closet and put it on. Of course, sexy was relative. This one was knee length, with spaghetti straps and a kind of fitted bodice, in champagne silk. Actually, it looked more like a slip than something she would call “lingerie,” but unless she wanted Rhys to see her in an ancient NYC Ballet T-shirt or the flannel pajamas she wore in the dead of winter, she was out of luck.

  She leaned over the bed to peek at him—he was flat on his stomach, one arm buried beneath the pillow and the other flung out to one side. His back was smoothly muscled, and the knob of one hip was visible where the sheet had slid past his waist.

  She sighed. The temptation to crawl back into bed beside him, run her fingers through that dark messy hair, stroke the firm flesh of his ass…. He grunted, startling her, and shifted into a new position. She backed away from the bed in a hurry. Probably better to let him sleep.

  But she had nothing to do, that was the problem. What did other early risers do with these bonus hours? Since she’d never been one before, she had no idea. She’d been oversleeping since childhood, for heaven’s sake.

  Rhys had obviously found some secret “on” switch and flipped it, she thought as she wandered toward her desk, Eloise following, her rippling plume of a tail tickling Olivia’s ankle. She wanted to do something, now. Anything, really, although there were clearly a few areas that deserved priority.

  The hotel, for one. She’d been avoiding thinking about it all week, but the truth was that if Stuart was up to something, if he was planning to wrest this old place away from her, she needed to be ready. She needed to go on the offensive, in fact. She needed to beat him at his own game, whatever game that was.

  He couldn’t simply take it away from her—it was hers, legally and officially and in every other way that mattered to the law. But he could…bankrupt her. He could spread rumors about the hotel. It was possible that he could take her to court—Callender House was a kind of institution, after all, and his name was Callender. Maybe if he proved that she was making a mess of things, a judge would hand him the deed.

  That didn’t seem likely, really. But what Olivia knew about real estate law fit on the head of a pin, maybe two if she was lucky. The object was to beat Stuart before he beat her. Maybe to put Callender House in the public eye again, so Stuart couldn’t pull any underhanded tricks.

  But how to do that? How to make Callender House a success? Especially after all these years of simply hanging on, the city growing up and changing around the old building. Hanging on like one of those pathetic kittens in the posters elementary school teachers hung in their classrooms.

  That’s what she’d been doing, she realized. The staff, too. Hanging on, pretending the ship wasn’t sinking and playing a merry little tune while they were at it to make the truth less painful.

  “How absurd,” she said aloud, and winced when Rhys snorted in his sleep. Holding her finger to her lips, she warned the cat to be quiet and took a pad and a pen from her desk. She sat down on the floor with her back to the loveseat, so she could spread out, even though she had no idea exactly what she’d be spreading out yet.

  But that was all right. She needed a plan. She could plan. She could brainstorm. Heck, she could do whatever she wanted, couldn’t she? She could…sell the place! That would teach Uncle Stuart.

  She frowned at Eloise, who had come to sit smack in the middle of the legal tablet Olivia had laid on the carpet beside her. She couldn’t sell the hotel any more than she could cut off her own arm. It was hers, her history and her childhood and her family all rolled into one. She had to save it, and right this moment she was beginning to feel a bit guilty that she hadn’t thought harder about how to do that before now.

  The sun was just beginning to streak the sky a soft sherbet pink when she picked up her pen and shooed the cat off her pad of paper. History and family aside, she didn’t simply need to save the hotel—she wanted to. It was hers, thanks to her father, and if she hadn’t realized until now that ownership meant she could run Callender House the way she liked, that was her fault. Traditions had been upheld for over a century, yes, but ev
en her father had put his own stamp on the place. She could do the same thing. She was going to do the same thing, starting now. No one on earth but her wanted to remember the Callender House that had been—new guests needed reasons to visit that didn’t revolve around her memories, and she was going to come up with those reasons. She bit the end of her pen thoughtfully. Callender House would be on the New York City map again, and she was going to put it there.

  Rhys woke to the smell of coffee. For a moment, he had no idea where he was—he was snugged under a rather froufrou pink flowered blanket, with a thick pillow beneath his head, so he wasn’t in his London flat. Or Fork in the Road’s dorm in L.A. Where the hell was he?

  He sat up gingerly, squinting the sleep out of his eyes, and found a steaming mug of black coffee on the bedside table. There was service, but who …? And then he saw Olivia on the floor across the room, and as the night came flooding back, his mouth widened in a satisfied grin. Olivia, that was it. Olivia and her lovely mouth and her sweet, funny shyness, her grand old bedraggled hotel, and her gorgeous sighing moans.

  She was busy with something, so he took up the mug and sniffed it—Christ, she must have brewed it for an hour. Tasted like mud, too. He’d have to teach her the beauty of a French press and some decent beans.

  But that was for later. Right now he wanted to know what the hell she was doing up and out of bed. At—he glanced at the bedside table clock, which was surprisingly shaped like a penguin—not even eight A.M.? She wasn’t just awake, she was in the midst of what looked like an explosion at a paper factory—scraps of notepaper were strewn around her on the floor, and one had landed precariously atop her coffee mug. Her hair was screwed up on top of her head as if a blind woman had arranged it, and a pen was stuck through the back of it to hold it in place. A pencil was clenched between her teeth.

  What the hell was she on about?

  Last night, he’d imagined a lazy morning in bed, with her underneath him, or possibly above him, and then perhaps a shower, equally lazy, with lots of sexy soap suds and the feel of her slick skin under his hands.