“What’s your last name?” I find myself asking.
“Montcalm,” she answers quietly.
Ivy Montcalm. For some reason I log that name away. I guess I want to remember her. I want to remember how different a woman can be, and how alluring that is at the same time. She’s too sexy to forget, and I’m a fool for not wanting to.
My cock is hating me, and my brain will forever be reliving this flight and the sight of her dressed the way she is.
But she stands there…alone…transparent if I wasn’t here talking to her. She looks like she wants the ground to swallow her up.
Separated, she had said. So she's not with him. But then she followed that up by saying things were complicated. What does that even mean? Is she going back to her douchebag husband or not?
But it doesn’t matter. I remind myself. Married is married. Isn’t it?
And yet…she’s so fucking beautiful, it hurts.
It occurs to me I can’t just walk away. I know I’m a dick, but I also know she deserves a little more than to feel used by said dick. Maybe I can make the sting of our departure less painful. Or, secretly, I’m testing my willpower.
“How about we share a ride home then?” I offer, forcing a smile on my face, but it feels contrived and awkward.
She looks at me, her eyes pinned to mine in a way I’m not used to. Taking me in and not my suit or watch or anything else that’s drawn a female’s attention to me before.
“Are you sure?” she asks quietly.
“I wouldn’t be asking if I wasn’t,” I answer. “I don’t like the thought of you going home in a fucking taxi, Ivy. It…feels wrong to me.”
Even if they're separated, her husband should be here. Fucking hell, her husband should be crawling over miles of broken glass if that’s what it took to be here with her. I glance around the airport, wondering maybe he’ll surprise her, but…there’s nobody looking her way.
Fuck, just imagining her making her way home alone this late bothers me.
How many women like her are standing in a crowd feeling so alone? How many are longing for a little bit of attention, to remember they exist just like the rest of us do?
I can sense her loneliness. If I come any closer, she might sense mine too.
“I don’t know you,” she says.
I resist rolling my fucking eyes. “We talked dirty for how many hours, and you think I’m some axe murderer?”
“It’s not that.”
“You don’t know what to tell your husband when you get back?”
She hesitates. “He won’t ask who gave me a lift.”
“But if he did?”
Now she’s sighing. “He won’t ask. He’d assume it was a taxi.”
“How are you so sure?”
“I’m sure.” Her voice hardens. She’s fucking sure, alright.
“Then I’ll take you home, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“You really don’t have to.”
I look at her hard. “I do.”
“Alright,” she relents, swallowing. She stands there, uncertain, waiting for me to take the lead because she’s nervous as shit. We're tempting each other, aren't we?
She’s doing something wrong.
I’m doing something wrong.
We’re both idiots doing the wrong things, and I don’t think either of us care now.
*
We make our way through the airport and it’s surprisingly not as packed as I thought it would be. I’ve been getting a lot of looks in the last ten minutes, and I can’t decide whether it’s the clothes that’s getting their attention, my exceptionally good looks because I’m an egotistical bastard that has to consider that option, or if they simply recognize me from the cover of business magazines that Ivy has unknowingly passed.
Judging by the smiles my way, I’m voting with confidence that it’s my good looks – at least, my pride says so anyway. Fuck knows I need reassurance now that my world has been slightly rocked by this girl and my strange need to taste her.
She notices the looks as well, and she’s peering at me curiously, but she doesn’t ask a thing.
Once we’re outside, I pull my phone out and dial my driver Gaston. “Where are you?” I demand when he picks up. “I’m waiting out front.”
“I’ll be there in a few moments, Mr West,” he responds in his French accent.
I feel Ivy’s stare drilling holes in the side of my head. I ignore it as the black Bentley Mulsanne pulls into a taxi zone in front of us. I motion for her to follow and she does. We load our bags in the trunk and then I open the backdoor for her. Her eyes widen at the gesture, like it’s so unbelievably foreign for a man to be doing something sweet to her. I frown a little as she climbs in. The alarms are ringing again inside my head.
I slide in next to her and the car begins to move. I ask her to give Gaston her address, and she does. Gaston simply nods but doesn’t say anything to me or her, doesn’t even acknowledge I’m with someone. He’s a good driver like that, which is why he goes wherever I go.
“So,” starts Ivy, scrambling to break the silence, “did you hear about those meteor showers that happened last week over Russia? Pretty crazy, huh?” She has that hopeful smile, like this is a chat between two old friends.
“Can’t say I give a fuck,” I reply absently, glancing at her in the dark. “I want to know why you led me on.”
That smile falls from her lips. “I didn’t lead you on.”
“By omitting your relationship status, you led me on.”
“Yeah, well, you never asked.”
I grit my teeth and lean over to her on the leather seat. I feel her bare skin rubbing against my suit as I murmur, “So it’s my fault then? Is that what your pretty little mouth is saying?”
“No, I already explained this, and I already apologized, too. Our conversation led from one thing to another, and before I
