Lust. || BEYNIKA

L|Chapter TWENTY-five.

Onika Cookie Maraj.

ELEVEN days I've been in Calistoga with Beyoncé for eleven days and I can't believe how wonderful it's been. Busy and tiring and exhausting but also... freaking amazing.

I don't ever want to come down off this high.

We've been working nonstop on Lust. It's small and quaint and gorgeous and sophisticated all at once. I've poured over endless fabric swatches, paint colors for the interiors, and searched through enough furniture catalogs and websites to make my eyes cross until I finally came up with the perfect color scheme for all eight of the suites, plus the lobby and spa accommodations.

All with Beyoncé's approval, of course, and she's loved everything I've come up with. Considering we have similar taste, it's been a relatively easy road. For all our arguing and fighting from the past, it's hard for me to believe just how easily and well we work together. She's brilliant and smart and comes up with the best ideas. I constantly compliment her as if I can't help myself.

And then she thanks me by kissing me stupid, stripping me naked and having her way with me. Again and again and again.

Every night that we're together it's like this. We come together in a frenzy of heated breaths, delicious kisses, soft sighs, and wandering hands over naked skin. During the day we're on our best behavior, working hard, going over plans, all sorts of plans, or returning to Hush where Beyoncé has to take care of her day-to-day responsibilities, which are tedious and sometimes irritating, but she always handles them with ease.

She's so good at her job, it's a joy to watch her in action. I admire the easy way she has with people. How efficiently she handles a guest complaint, an employee complaint, a call from some reporter inquiring about the Calistoga location. It's nonstop, everything she has to do.

As each day passes, my admiration for her grows. I care for Beyoncé far more than I want to admit. I think she cares for me too. Spending so much one-on-one time with this gorgeous, frustrating, adorable, volatile, sweet, stubborn woman, I can't get over how much I didn't know about her until now.

Her drive. Her passion. Her intelligence. She so believes in what she's doing, the service she provides for people, she will do everything she can to ensure that she offers her guests the absolute best service their money can buy. And she's pulling out all the stops for the new resort. It's costing her a fortune. She'll charge her guests a fortune too. But I have a sneaking suspicion they'll love it and come back for more.

And she'll become an absolute success all over again.

Running my fingers through my hair, I scratch the back of my head, squinting at my laptop's screen. I've been searching for the lobby rugs and I can't find them. I have a visual in my head, but so far nothing comes close to my imagination. I'm afraid I'm going to have to settle.

I know if I told Beyoncé that, she would flip. Demand I continue my search until I find rugs I absolutely love. She's definitely not about settling, even for rugs.

Hunched over my laptop, I curl my leg beneath me on the chair and sigh, scrolling through yet another textiles website, looking through a ton of ugly rugs that are all wrong, no matter how much I try to make them right. My vision is blurry and my neck aches. It's past seven, I'm so ready to call it quits but I'm trying to wait for Beyoncé to return.