Dallas Called My Ex Rich and Barren, So I Found Out He Was Neither novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Pastry Cooler

In the hotel cooler, eight months of anger turn into his mouth and hers, and when they come out every station in Dallas has pulled her clip because of what he said.

He had me against the shelves before the door finished sealing.

Trays of heart-shaped petit fours rattled over my head, and the cold bit through my thin work dress.

His mouth was the only warm thing in the room.

It came down on mine hard, and I opened for it at once.

Eight months is a long time to be angry with a mouth.

He tasted like coffee and the mint he always kept in his jacket pocket.

I fisted his tie and pulled him in until his chest pinned me to the steel.

"Rules," I said against his lips.

"Reyna," he said.

"This doesn't mean anything," I said.

His hands slid down my sides and found my hips.

"And afterward we don't talk about us. Not a sound."

"Then don't talk," Levi said.

He bent his head and kissed my neck under the ear, and I made a sound I had not made in a year.

"Cold?" he asked, low, with his lips on my skin.

"Not where it counts."

He laughed, one short breath through his nose, and his hands went around to the zipper at my back.

He drew it down slowly, all the way to the base of my spine, and the cold touched every inch it uncovered.

I shivered, and he kissed the shiver.

The dress dropped off my shoulders and caught on my hips.

I wore a plain black bra, and he stared at it anyway.

"You don't have to look at it," I said. "Take it off."

He reached behind me and unhooked it with one hand, as he always could, and slid the straps down my arms.

My nipples drew tight in the cold air at once.

"Fuck," he said quietly. "I forgot."

"Forgot what?"

"How much of you there is."

He cupped both breasts, heavy in his palms, and ran his thumbs over the peaks.

I let my head fall back against the shelf.

He bent and took one nipple in his mouth, and the heat of it pulled a sound out of me.

He sucked, hard and then soft, and flicked his tongue over the tip until I was arching into him.

He moved to the other breast and did the same, and I fisted his hair.

"Harder," I said.

He bit down gently, and I felt it low in my belly, a tug that went straight between my legs.

I ground my thigh against his, and he groaned around my nipple.

"You're soaking my leg," he said, against my skin.

"Then do something about it."

He pushed the dress down over my hips and let it fall around my shoes.

He stopped when he saw the black tights.

"These have to go."

"Then take them off."

He hooked his thumbs in the waistband and peeled them down my legs, slowly, one inch at a time.

The cold air touched every inch he uncovered.

He knelt on the tile to get them past my shoes.

He looked up at me from there, with his dark blond hair fallen over his forehead and that chipped tooth showing.

My knees went weak.

"Lift your foot," he said.

I lifted it, and he slid the tights off and tossed them on a rack of lemon tarts.

Then he put my foot up on a crate of butter.

I was open to him, and the cotton between my legs was already soaked through.

He saw that.

He pressed his face to the front of my underwear and breathed in, a long breath, and I heard the sound he made.

"God, Reyna."

"Don't look at it," I said. "Do something."

He pulled the cotton aside with one finger and put his mouth on me.

I smacked my head against the shelf behind me.

His tongue went flat and slow along my slit, from the bottom to my clit.

The heat of it against the cold air made my whole body jerk.

"Again," I said.

He did it again.

He circled my clit with the tip of his tongue, over and over, light.

I pushed my hips at his mouth to make him press harder.

He knew exactly how I liked it, and he made me wait for it anyway.

"Levi," I said. "Harder."

He pressed, and I gasped.

He licked me with the whole flat of his tongue, then sucked my clit between his lips, and my hand flew down to his hair.

"There," I said. "Just like that. Don't stop."

He slid two fingers inside me, thick and slow, and curled them up.

My thighs started to shake.

"Eight months," he said against me, rough.

"You still taste the same."

"Shut up and keep going."

He growled into my pussy, and the vibration ran up through my whole belly.

I held the shelf with my free hand.

The trays above me shook.

A petit four slid off the edge and landed on his shoulder, and he did not even stop.

I started to laugh and the laugh broke in the middle into a moan.

"Right there," I said. "Right there, right there."

His fingers pumped, and his tongue worked my clit, and the pressure in my belly wound tighter and tighter.

I bit the sleeve of my dress so the dishwashers down the hall would not hear.

Then it broke.

I came with my head thrown back against the steel and his name pushed out through my teeth.

His mouth stayed on me through every pulse, until I whimpered and tried to push him off.

He didn't let me.

He slowed his tongue until it was barely touching.

He held me there on the edge of too much, with two fingers still curled inside me.

"Again," he said, against my thigh.

"I can't."

"You can. I remember."

He pressed his thumb on my clit and moved his fingers in that slow come-here stroke.

My body, which had been ready to quit, woke up and wanted more.

"Oh, you bastard," I breathed.

"Say my name," he said, against me.

"Levi," I said.

"Again."

"Levi, Levi, fuck, don't stop."

The second one came fast and rough, and it folded me over his head.

I rode his hand with my teeth in my lip, gasping.

A tray of petit fours slid off the shelf and landed on the tile with a soft wet crash.

Neither of us even looked.

He gave me one more slow lick that made my whole leg kick.

Only then did he sit back on his heels, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

His mouth was shining, and he was smiling the crooked chipped smile that had gotten me married.

I slid down the shelf until I was almost level with him.

"My turn," I said.

I got my hands on his belt.

He stood up, and I went down in his place, with my knees on a flattened produce box.

I unbuckled him and pulled down his zipper.

He was hard already, thick and flushed, straining against his gray boxer briefs, and a dark wet spot had spread over the cotton.

I pressed my mouth to it through the fabric and he swore.

"Look at you," I said. "Eight months, and you're this ready."

"You don't know."

"Tell me."

"I've been this hard since you picked up that microphone," he said.

I pulled his briefs down.

His cock sprang free, long and heavy, and I took it in my hand and stroked him from the base to the head.

He drew a hard breath through his teeth.

I put my mouth over the tip.

He tasted of salt and heat.

I took him slowly, an inch at a time, and let my tongue slide along the underside.

His hand came into my hair, gentle, and I felt it shake.

"Reyna," he said, in a voice I hadn't heard since the first year we were married.

I took him deeper.

I breathed through my nose and went down until he touched the back of my throat.

Then I pulled up slowly with my cheeks hollowed.

"Fuck," he said. "Fuck, baby, just like that."

I did it again.

I worked him with my mouth and my hand together, slick and wet.

Every time I reached the head I swirled my tongue under the ridge and felt his thighs tense.

I cupped his balls in my other hand, heavy and tight, and rolled them gently.

He said something in a broken voice that was mostly my name.

I let him slip out of my mouth and licked a long slow stripe from the base to the tip.

"Tell me what you dreamed about," I said.

"This."

"What else?"

"Your mouth," he said, shaking. "Your mouth on me, every night, in the apartment, with the lights off."

I took him in again.

He swore, and the hand in my hair tightened.

"Reyna, that's it, that's so good, you're so good at this."

I hummed around him, and his knees almost went.

He tried to hold still.

He couldn't.

His hips began to rock, small and careful, and I looked up at him through my lashes with his cock between my lips.

His face broke open.

"I'm going to come," he said.

I didn't move.

I wrapped my hand around the base of him and sucked harder.

"Reyna. I'm going to."

I made a sound around him that said I knew.

His whole body locked.

He came in my mouth in long hot pulses, with his hand tight in my hair and my name broken in his throat.

I swallowed every drop and kept my tongue moving until he shuddered and pulled back.

I sat on my heels and wiped my mouth with my wrist.

"That," I said, "is what the city says you can't do."

He started to laugh, helplessly, and sank down on the produce box in front of me with his trousers around his thighs.

"They said it," he said. "You never did."

"I never did."

He took my face in his hands.

His thumbs were shaking against my cheeks.

"I never wanted it signed," he said.

"Rule one," I said. "No talking."

"Reyna."

"Not a thing, Levi."

Someone knocked on the steel door.

"Hello?" a man's voice called. "Sorry. I need the cream."

We stared at each other.

I stood up, hauled my dress back over my hips, zipped it and picked my tights off the lemon tarts.

Levi buckled his belt with fingers that would not work and brushed a petit four off his shoulder.

I opened the door.

A pastry chef in a white jacket stood there with an empty tray and a very flat face.

"Take your time, ma'am," he said. "I've got three hundred more of these."

We went out through the kitchen, past the dishwashers, who suddenly found their sinks fascinating.

At the loading dock, in the gray afternoon, I pulled out my phone.

It had forty-one messages from Yesi.

I scrolled to the last.

GIRL. Your clip had two million views before lunch.

And then it was GONE. Channel 8 pulled it. Channel 4 pulled it. Every station that had it.

Because of what he said at the end. Nobody in this city wants a call from Levi Kellum.

I looked up at Levi.

He was leaning against the dock wall, buttoning his jacket over the gap at his waist.

He saw my face and went still.

"They took my clip down," I said.

"Reyna," he said.

"I pinned my own divorce to a curtain in front of four hundred women. You took the microphone and made it go away."

"I was protecting you," he said, quietly.

"Rule one," I said. "I know. Nothing about us."

I walked down the dock steps toward my car.

I knew exactly where I was going Monday morning, and it was not to my own bed.

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