Only in Your Dreams (Gossip Girl #9)(3)
Dropping the unopened paper onto the floor, she scanned her bedside table for British Vogue—she’d stocked up on all the English magazines so she’d know what to buy and where to buy it—when her new razor-thin Vertu phone chimed prettily. There was only one person who had her new London telephone number.
“Hello?” she answered as sexily as she could with a mouth full of scrambled egg.
“Darling,” Lord Marcus Beaton-Rhodes greeted her in his charming British accent. “I’m coming round. Just wanted to make sure you were up, love.”
“I’m up, I’m up!” Blair was unable to control her excitement. She’d spent the last two nights alone, and her horniness was bubbling over into near-frenzy. How they’d made it this far without actually doing it, she wasn’t sure. Was this their chance for a morning interlude sans knickers?
“Right,” he continued in his charmingly straightforward way. “I’ll be by shortly. And I’ve got a surprise.”
A surprise! thought Blair giddily as she shut her phone. That was just the kind of wake-up call she needed to get her out of bed. She scurried to the bathroom, discarding clothes as she went. Could it be roses and caviar? Chilled champagne and oysters? It was kind of early in the morning for that, but judging from the last present he’d given her—the Bvlgari pearl earrings, with their dangling gold Bs—it was bound to be good. Some equally exquisite symbol of his undying love? Everyone back in New York was so insanely jealous of her perfect English boyfriend that they’d spread rumors Marcus was already engaged. There was only one way to put that rumor to rest forever: return to New York wearing his ring. Preferably a flawless, four-carat, emerald-cut diamond, although an old family heirloom would do.
How humble of her.
Lord Marcus had initially invited her to spend the summer at his father’s Knightsbridge mansion, but when he’d picked her up from Heathrow in his chauffeur-driven cream-colored Bentley he’d taken her straight to Claridge’s. “We simply haven’t got the room, sweetheart,” Marcus whispered directly into her ear, his hot breath sending shivers down her spine as the desk attendant handed her the room key. “Plus, when I come over, we’ll have complete privacy.”
Well, that’s hard to argue with.
Blair wasn’t sure what Marcus’s dad did for a living, but it had something do with bonds, and whatever it was sounded very boring. Marcus was interning at his dad’s office for the summer, and late nights and early mornings meant he had hardly any energy for . . . sex. Blair had only done it a few times with Nate Archibald, and she was beyond eager to try it with someone older and more experienced, like Marcus—not that sex with Nate had been so bad.
Her rosemary La Mer bath tonic and minty Marvis toothpaste masking the stink of scrambled egg and tomato, she hurried back to the bedroom and hopped into bed, wearing only a light sheen of lavender-scented bath water, Chanel No. 5 perfume, and the Bvlgari earrings she hadn’t taken off once since her graduation party at the Yale Club a little over two weeks ago.
After ditching Vanessa Abrams’s small apartment in dingy and weird Williamsburg, with no intention of moving back to the crazy world she used to call home, Blair had decided to live at the Yale club. She and Lord Marcus had met in the elevator, and his hot accent and neatly ironed jeans had gotten to her right away. Fate had it that their rooms were side by side, and she could imagine the feel of his sexy English breath on her neck even before they’d kissed—which had happened that very night. After pouring her heart out to him over six or seven cosmos, Blair was so sure she’d found the love of her life, she practically threw herself at him. She was too tipsy— and he was too much of a gentleman—to do more than kiss. But all that was about to change.
Blair draped the sheets over her body and lit a cigarette, striking a pose that said, I’m on my honeymoon and worn out from doing it, but what the hell, let’s do it again. She grabbed the newspaper off of the floor and propped up the front page so it looked like she was reading it. There. Perfect. An intellectual sexpot. A worldly woman who read all about international crises—and preferred to discuss said crises in bed. If only she had a pair of vintage fifties reading glasses to perch on the tip of her nose.
All the better to see you naked with!
As if on cue, Lord Marcus flung the bedroom door open and Blair turned her head slowly, as if she could barely stand to break away from the current poultry deficit in Asia. He was wearing a perfectly tailored charcoal summer suit with an olive James Perse T-shirt underneath that made his striking green eyes look serious and deep and oh-so-promising.
“What’s this, then?” he asked, furrowing his golden-brown eyebrows. “Remember I said I had a surprise?”
“I’ve got a surprise for you too,” Blair cooed sexily. “Come look under the sheets.”
“Right,” he continued a little impatiently. “Well, put on your clothes, love.”
“I don’t want to,” Blair complained, pouting.
He hurried across the room and kissed her quickly on the nose. “Later,” he promised. “Now throw on some clothes and meet me downstairs in the lobby.” Then he turned and left the room, leaving her perfumed, well-moisturized, and depilated body naked and alone.
This better be a good surprise.
Blair emerged from the wood-paneled elevator in a hastily chosen ensemble: a chocolate brown Tory Burch tunic (thank you, Harrods), a favorite pair of old True Religion jeans, and clunky gold Marc by Marc Jacobs clogs. She looked like a jet-setter on holiday. Just right for a weekend jaunt to Tunis in Lord Marcus’s private jet. Could that be the surprise?