Rogue (Real Book 4)
Rogue: Chapter 2

Melanie

Sometimes the only way to stop a pity party is with a real party.

Expectation hums in the air as warm bodies jostle, my body straining in between the other dancers. I can feel the fun around us spinning like whirlwinds at my sides, intoxicating me.

My body’s slick from dancing, my silky gold top and matching skirt clinging to my curves in a way that tells me I should’ve probably worn a bra. The brush of damp fabric only causes my nipples to poke into the silk and draw several discerning male eyes in my direction.

But it’s too late now, and the crowd is high on the music, the dancing.

I stopped by tonight when one of my clients, for whom I decorated this small little bar/restaurant, invited my boss and all my colleagues over. I said only one drink, but I’ve had a couple extra, and the one half empty in my hand is now seriously the last one.

A guy approaches.

I can’t miss his sudden, I-want-to-bang-you smile. “Want to dance with me?”

“We already are!” I say, moving a little with him, swinging my hips harder.

The guy wraps an arm around my waist and pulls me closer. “I meant if you want to dance alone with me. Somewhere else?”

I look at him, feeling a little high and dizzy. Do I want to dance with him?

He’s cute. Not sexy, but cute. Sober, cute is no way, Jose. But drunk, cute is completely doable. I try to replace the answer in my body. A tingle. A want. And nope. Today I still feel . . . hopeless.

Smiling to ease the blow, I edge away from him but he presses close to my body and blatantly whispers in my ear, “I really want to take you home.”

“Of course you do.” I laugh, declining the drink he offers with a playful, but firm, shake of my head.

I think I’m a little too drunk already, and I have to drive myself home.

But I don’t want to aggravate a possible client, so I kiss his cheek and say, “But thanks,” and head away. He takes me by the wrist and stops and turns me, his eyes hot and lusty. “No. Really. I want to take you home.”

I give him another once-over. He looks rich and just a little bit entitled, the kind who always uses me, and I suddenly feel even more hopeless, more vulnerable. In less than a month, my best friend is getting married. The effect of that wedding on me is not bad, it’s worse. Far worse than anyone could have imagined. My eyes burn when I think about it, because everything my best friend, Brooke, has—the baby, the adoring husband—has been my dream for so long, I cannot remember having another dream.

Here’s a man who wants to have sex with me, and once again I’m tempted to fall. Because I always fall. I always wonder if he, maybe he, is the one for me. The next thing I know, I wake up alone with a bunch of used condoms around me and feeling lonelier than ever, and I am once again reminded I’m only good for one-night stands. I’m no one’s queen, no one’s Brooke. But god, will someone just tell me, when do you stop kissing frogs? Never, that’s when. If you want that prince, you have to keep trying until one day you wake up, and you’re Brooke, and a man’s eyes are shining on you and only you.

“Look, I’ve done you a thousand times,” I whisper, sadly and hopelessly shaking my head.

The guy lifts his brows. “What are you talking about?”

“You. I’ve done you.” I signal at him, top to bottom, his elegant looks and dress, the weight of my sadness and disappointment only crushing me further. “I’ve done you . . . a thousand times. And it’s just not going to work.” I turn to leave, but he catches me and spins me around again.

“Blondie, you’ve never done me,” he counters.

I look at him again, tempted to just be taken home and made to feel good.

But this afternoon, I was at my best friend’s place, where I caught her being kissed long and hard by her guy, a kiss so long and hot, he was murmuring sexy stuff to her the whole time, telling her he loved her, in a voice that was deep and tender, and I wanted to cry.

My insides are still warm and sensitive remembering, and not even dancing for a full night has successfully made me forget how truly loveless I feel. After seeing the way my best friend is kissed, really kissed, and after knowing she will have less time for me now that she has other priorities with her new and beautiful family, I’m starting to feel like I will never, ever replace the kind of love that they have. She was always responsible, always a good girl, but I am . . . me.

The fun one.

The one-night stand.

“Come on, Blondie,” he urges in my ear, sensing my indecision.

I sigh and turn. He pulls me close, and he looks at my mouth as if ready to convince me with a kiss. I’m a toucher. Brooke calls me her love bug. I love closeness, contact, crave it like I crave air. But I never really feel any man’s touch reach past my skin. Yet I’m always tempted because I keep thinking that THE ONE is right around the corner and I can’t help but try.

Leaning over and fighting the temptation to kiss one more frog, I search for the last of my conviction and say again, “No. Really. Thanks. I’m going home now.” I’m tucking my bag under my arm, readying to leave, when a low rumble causes the tinted wall-to-wall windows to reverberate.

The doors burst open and a couple walks inside, soaking wet, the woman shaking her damp loose hair, laughing.

“Omigod!” I cry, my stomach plummeting when I realize it’s fucking raining.

I run to the door when a man grabs the handle with a black-gloved hand and gallantly pulls it open for me. I almost stumble outside, and he grips my elbow to steady me. “Easy,” he says in a rolling voice as he steadies me on my feet, and I blink desperately across the street at the light blue Mustang. All I have in my name. All I have to sell because I desperately need the money and who will want it now? It’s a convertible and a little old, but it’s as cute as it is unique, with white interior seats to match the tent top. But now it’s outside in this rain, with its top down, becoming my very own Titanic with wheels.

My entire life is sinking right with it.

“I assume by that sad puppy-dog look on your face that that’s your car,” the rolling voice says.

I helplessly nod and lift my eyes to the stranger. A flash of lightning cuts through the distance, illuminating his features.

And I can’t speak.

Or think.

Or breathe.

His eyes grab me and won’t let go. I stare into their depths while also registering that his face is stunning. Hard jaw, high cheekbones, strong forehead. His nose is classic, sleek, and elegant, and the lips beneath are full and curved, firm and . . . god, he’s edible. His dark hair flips playfully in the wind. He’s tall and broad shouldered and dressed in dark slacks and a dark turtleneck that makes him look both elegant and dangerous.

But his eyes.

They’re an indecipherable color, but it’s not the color, it’s the stare, the incredible shine. Framed with thick black lashes, his eyes shine as brilliant as the brightest lights I’ve ever seen. As they quietly assess my features in return, those narrowed eyes feel as powerful as X-rays, and they seem to be sparkling especially because I—me—have somehow done something to amuse this man, this . . . fuck, I have no name for him. Except Eros. Cupid himself. God of love. In the flesh.

I used to think Cupid used an arrow but I don’t feel as if I’ve been pierced by an arrow. I feel like I’ve been hit. By a rocket.

As I keep standing here, floored by the over six feet of total hotness before me, he grabs my keys from me with one gloved hand and puts his other free one on my hip to hold me in place. And I feel it. I feel the touch race down my hips, knotting in my stomach, pulsing in my sex, straight down my thighs, curling my toes. “Stay here,” he says into my ear, then he pulls up the collar of his turtleneck until it becomes a hood in the back, and he runs across the street.

I watch him head to where my car is getting soaked. The wind whips through the streets so hard, I have to use both hands to try to flatten my skirt so it doesn’t fly up to my middle.

“Put the top on!” I force myself to yell through the pounding rain, suddenly as determined as he is to save my car.

“Princess, I got this!” He leaps into the front seat, turns on the car, and the top starts coming up until it . . . doesn’t.

It gets stuck.

After a squeal of protest, the fucker starts coming back down.

“ARGH, SHIT!” I hurry into the street and suddenly the drops of rain bombard me like little cannon balls, soaking me in a second. I swear I want to yell Fuck you! at them. My car, the one thing in my life that hasn’t been shit on, is being ruined and I want to scream.

“Are you kidding me? Get under the roof!” The guy leaps out and then pulls off his sweater in one quick jerk. He spreads the material over my head, using it to shield me from the rain while he herds me back to the small awning over the building entry.

“No! I’ll help you. My precious car!” I cry and push at his chest, trying to get him to back off, but he’s a head taller and built of steel.

“I’ve got your car,” he promises. He hands me his soaked turtleneck and adds, “Hold this,” before he runs back out.

He’s wearing a white crewneck undershirt, and it clings to his sculpted torso as he tries to manually override and pull the top of my car back in place.

Raindrops sluice down his bare arms, the soaked cotton of his shirt plastered down on his chest, revealing every muscle in existence. Fuck. He’s off-the-charts gorgeous; he just broke my Man Hotness Radar. I can’t take my eyes off every inch of his body or the way it moves.

Thunder shakes the city again when he finally latches the top of my car on and signals for me to come over. He opens my car door from the inside, and I hurry into the passenger seat and shut it behind me.

My cold, slick clothes cling against my skin while he sits behind the wheel, looking big and manly, and suddenly we’re ensconced in the small, almost cramped interior of my car. The seats are flooded with water, and when I shift to face him a little, I hear a squish that makes my cheeks burn in embarrassment.

“I can’t believe this,” I whisper. “My best friend tells me I’m the only idiot with a convertible in Seattle.”

His eyes are openly amused. “I dig your car.” He reaches out to the dashboard, and the hand he runs over it is covered in an elegant lambskin glove that makes my skin prick with goose bumps. He shifts his big torso in my direction with an irresistibly devastating grin. “Everything wet gets dry; don’t worry, princess.”

I can hardly take the way he says wet.

Or the way a raindrop clings to his dark eyelashes. Water sluices down his tanned, corded arms. His hair is slicked back, enhancing the beautiful face he has. I have seen works of art and beautiful men, beautiful buildings and beautiful rooms, but at this moment as he looks at me, I can’t remember ever seeing anything besides him.

He’s a ten. I’ve never, ever been with a ten. And the way that he looks at me . . . I’ve seen that look before. The look that Remington Tate gives Brooke. That look. He’s giving it to me and I’m dying inside. Can I die from one look? And if one look can kill me, then what would one touch do?

“So,” he says softly, his voice textured. He waits a little before speaking again, and it surprises me that he still only looks at my face, not my wet chest, not my bare legs—he’s looking at nothing but my eyes while absently stroking the circle of my steering wheel.

“Want to go somewhere with me?” he asks, then reaches out with his free wet black glove to brush my hair back behind my ear.

What I feel is so far beyond lust, I can hardly answer him.

I tremble. “Yes,” I say, dizzied with want.

He gives me a smile that sends my pulse racing, his hand lingering on my face for a second longer, then he shifts my car into gear and pulls us into the rainy streets. The air between us crackles in the silence.

The only audible sound outside is the rain and thunder. The inside of the car is dominated by his breathing. His breaths are deep and slow, but mine are fast and nervous.

He smells . . . like a wet forest. With a touch of leather. His eyes are on the road, but I’m only aware of him. The way his chest expands his wet T-shirt. His shadowed profile and how the city lights flicker across his face as we pass. His wet jeans clinging to his hard thighs. I think we both know we’re going to do it.

We’re going to have our hands all over each other in minutes, and the knowledge is causing havoc in my brain. I feel like some little sex gremlin in me has just emerged. I have a thing about man nipples and his man nipples are poking deliciously into his white T-shirt and his jeans are . . . god, his jeans are straining to the breaking point. He wants me. He wants to do me. This amazingly beautiful man who makes me cross-eyed with wanting.

“You always this quiet?” he asks me in a strangely thick voice, and I jerk my eyes to his face; that smile on his face really gets to me.

“I’m s-su-suppper-super c-ccold.”

He signals to a tall hotel that I know is expensive even to dine at, but he doesn’t seem to mind pulling into its driveway. “Seems the closest place where we can get dry.”

“Yes, it’s perfect,” I say, too eagerly.

I’m into perfect things, beautiful things, things that are lively and fun. My parents as a couple? Perfect. I’m usually picture perfect myself. But tonight? I slide a hand down my hair as we cross the lobby and I can’t imagine what I look like. Wet rat seems like a good bet. Why why why do I look like shit right now?

While he asks for room keys at the front desk, I examine his butt in his jeans, the fit of his clothes, and I can’t seem to quell the flutters.

As I squish my way into the elevator along with a bunch of other people, I rub my arms and try to stop my teeth from chattering. He smiles at me across a couple, and his smile lights a spark of mischief in me and I smile back.

I follow him into the room and then into the huge marble bathroom. He takes his turtleneck from my cramped hand and hangs it aside, then, without warning, he reaches one hand to his T-shirt and pulls it off with one yank that makes all his muscles ripple. “Take off your shoes,” he murmurs. I unclasp them and kick them aside.

When I straighten, my breath almost chokes me when I see his bare chest. Corded arms, every possible muscle in existence marked. There’s a thin line of hair traveling down his navel into the waistband of his jeans. Ripped abs, thick throat, and those lips, kissable and beautiful lips. God. He has a scar—a big one on the left side of his ribs—and a wave of sympathy washes over me, then I notice he’s undressing me.

My pulse jumps in excitement and my nipples peak. “What’s a girl like you doing in a place like that?” he asks with his eyebrows drawn low over his eyes, and I start trembling as he peels off my shirt.

On impulse I reach out and touch the scar on his chest with one finger. “What happened to you?”

He unzips my skirt and as he pulls it down, he leans over and catches my earlobe between his teeth and tugs playfully. “You know curiosity killed the cat, don’t you, little kitten?” he murmurs in my ear, urging my arms up so he can pull my shirt off.

I smile drunkenly and open my mouth to answer, and he kisses me. He takes me by surprise and I grab his shoulders to brace myself, shocked by my own responsiveness to his hot, silken, wild mouth. My own hunger unleashes in a torrent. His lips push mine open, hungry. I moan and bury my hands in his wet hair so he doesn’t stop kissing me, and I rock my hips as his tongue pushes inside. Shivers of desire race through me as he leans over me, eating me with his mouth as my head falls back and a noise of pleasure purls out of my throat.

I shudder as I beg him to please touch my nipples.

“You’re drunk,” he whispers as he looks down at me in only my underwear, his eyes wild with heat as my nipples almost poke into the air.

“Only tipsy,” I whisper, almost a moan. “Please don’t stop, I ache all over.”

With a notable clamp to his jaw, he reaches up and I feel his gloved hand sifting through my hair—then he looks at me, his eyes flashing as he seems to actually remember he’s wearing gloves.

He peels them off, one by one. “Are you certain?” he says.

A frisson runs through me when I see his hands. Strong, big, tanned. Oh god. Suddenly I feel those hands on my waist and he lifts me up to set me down on the marble slab, easing his body between my legs. “You certain?” he insists.

He looks intently at me as he begins tweaking my nipples, and I can almost see the rigidness of his self-control there, that if I say no, he will stop, but I nod, then he groans and pinches my nipples in the most delicious way as he bends over, fitting his lips to mine, hard this time. Superhard. His tongue plunging, twisting, hard and hungry around mine, bolts of pleasure shooting from my nipples to my toes, my mouth to my sex. The marble slab beneath me, the room, the hotel, everything falls away until it’s only hot, powerful, wet lips moving mine. Tasting me. Hands fondling my breasts, running down my sides. My thoughts spin, his kiss and touch rousing my passion like nothing ever has. My hands smooth up his damp chest and when I touch the metal of a piercing on his left nipple, I almost die.

“Oh god,” I gasp, the intensity overwhelming as my bum aches from the cold of the marble. “Take me to bed.”

He carries me to the room, throwing me to the bed like he means business. He flexes his hands at his sides as he jerks off his jeans and pulls out a condom packet. Oh god. His hands are huge, and tanned, with long fingers. A scar in his palm. I really want them on me. In me. He pulls down my panties.

“My name is Melanie,” I breathe, edging back on the bed as he strips me.

Naked. He’s moving with a predatory grace that sends my heart crashing into my rib cage and a flood of need between my legs. He whispers, “My name is Greyson, Melanie.” He puts my hand on his and starts kissing me as we work a condom on him, and I can feel his heartbeat throbbing under my hand.

I love the way he keeps kissing me, our hands touching his hardness, huge, thick, pulsing, as we get the condom on him, a pool of need gathering between my thighs.

He slips a finger into my pussy and watches my eyes roll back. “I fucking want in you,” he murmurs, kissing my throat. He turns his head to muffle my gasp and takes my mouth. “I’m going to give you the fucking of your life, princess.” His wet tongue slowly drags along the shell of my ear. “I’ll suck on you until my jaw hurts.” His low voice drives me so crazy I can feel pebbles rise up on my nape as he cups the back of my head and starts kissing me again. “Make you come as hard as you can come.”

He makes me so wet, my body starts bucking as he keeps sucking my breasts, making me pant.

I slide my arm up the coiled muscles of his chest. I rear upward and move my head to the source of his breath and whimper in the only way I know how to make him think about kissing me. He does. He gyrates his hips and presses against my hip bone as though he needs the contact, and makes a soft growling noise as he slips his hand between my legs.

I want him so much, I hurt.

I spread my legs wider apart and moan as he takes me. I squirm as my body begins tightening.

“I’m going to come,” I moan softly. “I’m sorry . . . I can’t . . . you feel too . . . good . . . I can’t . . .”

“Come,” he rasps, “it’s all right, we’ll do it again in a bit . . . come . . .”

Pure red-hot ecstasy radiates through my body, my knees falling open, my emotions whirling and skidding, my body clenching and clasping and unclasping his, his thrusts shooting currents through me until I do what his sinful body is making me do, and I come like a rocket.

I gasp from the force of my orgasm, twisting and arching beneath him. He pushes in as deep as he can go, and I shudder uncontrollably and whimper in gratitude every time he’s seated fully inside me, making me feel . . . the opposite of lonely. The opposite of sad or empty. And when my climax subsides and he’s still there—every thick, hot, hard inch of him snugly in my grip—my eyes flutter open, and I see him looking at me, with that look, wild, hungry, almost proprietary, but also strangely reverent and gentle as he starts to move in me again with expert precision, our eyes clinging, the way he fucks me gently now making little stars dance across my vision as another delicious climax builds and builds.

I don’t expect to but I come again. Hard. If possible, even harder, because the walls of my sex are sore and sensitive, and my clit throbs every time his hips ram up against mine—and the pleasure grows exponentially until it’s slicing me open in a pure burst of pleasure. My nails rake into his skin. I scream his name, almost scared from the intensity. He muffles my cries with his mouth, and this time he snakes his tongue around mine and cuts off his name to Grey. He groans as if he likes to taste his name in my mouth, his muscles are flexing against me as he goes off, his chest brushing against my breasts as he comes with me.

When his shudders subside after mine, he rolls to his back and, because he’s still inside me and has both arms around me, I end up coming with him. We lie in breathless silence for a moment, tangled and not even caring about whose arm is where, or whose leg is hooked between the other’s. I am so absolutely dazed, fucked, and blown the fuck away, I almost expect to see pieces of me scattered across the floor.

After a couple of minutes, I let out a noise of protest, wanting to get up. He releases me, allowing me to tiptoe to the bathroom to clean up. He follows, knotting up the condom, and as I wash my hands he comes up behind me to take the soap and wash his hands along with mine while our gazes meet in the mirror. I see my reflection and . . . no, I don’t look like a wet rat. My cheeks are flushed pink, my hair is bed mussed, and when he smiles at me and cups my breast from behind, I’m done for. “Come back to bed so I can make you pant a little more,” he whispers, into my skin.

“I don’t pant,” I say, taking his hand, the one on my breast, and pulling him out to the bedroom with me.

“You pant, moan, yelp, and now you’ll do it all over again for me.”

“I didn’t do that!” I say as I drop back down, and when he crawls over me, I feel perfectly sober. I’m not even tipsy anymore. I know I will remember every inch of the way his face looks, intent and ravenous, and as he starts playing with my breasts I start panting as he trails his fingers along my rib cage, circling my bellybutton, watching me with a smile that tells me he knows exactly what he’s doing. I smile back, because bad boys will always be the end of me, and I touch his nipple ring, feeling his erection thicken against my hips as I raise my head and start quietly sucking him. I know how to play these games too, my sexy sex god, I think. “Now who pants,” I murmur playfully.

“I think you’re hot as fuck,” he says as he rolls over and brings me with him, pressing my head to his nipple ring as though he wants me to suck harder. His big body shudders with pleasure, and desire pools between my thighs as I keep tugging with my teeth and using my tongue, feeling him swell hard and pulsing against me.

The entire night we play with each other, teasing, tasting, fondling, fucking.

Every touch, every whisper, everything I share of myself with him feels so right; like an electric wire plugged into the right socket, I feel a new life force flow in me, almost euphoria.

During our heated make-out sessions, I replace him looking at me through thick dark lashes, a playful curiosity glimmering in his eyes.

He asks about me as if he truly wants to know, and I feel like we’ve known each other before . . . in some dark, forbidden place.

When he kisses me heatedly on the mouth during another make out, I come at him with the intensity of a natural disaster, and this may be what this is, but there is no stopping me, no stopping him, it seems, from having and undoing me.

Around five a.m. his phone rings for the third time. We’re still kissing with lazy intensity and my lips feel raw and red and swollen and my breasts are deliciously sore but I’m still begging for more. Growing exasperated with the buzzing, he finally answers gruffly, “This better be good.”

I flip over to my stomach to give him room to talk and quietly study his profile. His eyes and one of his hands stay on the curve of my ass as he speaks into the receiver.

As he discusses what I think is business in a low, gruff voice I can barely make out, I memorize the grooves of his abs, trailing my fingers along his stomach. I edge toward his lap and, as he keeps squeezing my ass in one big hand, I kiss his hard cock and lick up the wetness, which makes him squeeze his eyes shut for a moment and exhale roughly.

When he finally opens his eyes, they’re hard and cold. He snaps a list of numbers into the receiver, then hangs up and remains thoughtful, and that’s when I sense he’s pulled back from me.

I sit up in bed with a sick sensation. This is it, and then my suspicion is confirmed when his glorious body rises from the bed where he was just mine. I watch him disappear into the bathroom, a sinking sense of despair burning in the pit of me. I know what’s coming, don’t I? I know. The look I thought I saw last night was a trick. A trick of the drink. A trick of the light. A motherfucking trick and I should’ve known it. Now I’m dying inside and it isn’t of excitement. This little fantasy? This fleeting connection I thought I had with someone? It’s over.

It wasn’t a connection. Or even real. It was a little alcohol, some rain, some hormones, and a couple of sexy lines that made me believe he really was as turned on by me as he’d ever in his life been.

“I’ve got a flight early and need to take care of one last thing before I leave.” He comes back with his clothes fisted in his hands and quickly jumps into his jeans. His jaw is a little too tight, as though he isn’t enjoying this any more than I am.

“Sure,” I say, and I hope to hell I sound nonchalant enough. All of these orgasms and the way I made those embarrassing noises for him are making this extremely awkward because I lost it. Omigod, I lost it, I lost myself in a complete stranger.

He looks at me, then opens his mouth for a moment before anything actually comes out. “It’s fucking complicated—you don’t want me in your life.”

“Don’t. Please don’t. You don’t have to do this. Let’s leave it at this. I know how this goes. Goodbye, have a nice life. Adios, Pepe.”

We stare, he whispers, “I shouldn’t have touched you.” He heads to the door. I look at his broad back while working on my brave face. I’ve done this a million times. I’m putting up walls around the parts where it hurts so that it doesn’t hurt one whit. Not one whit.

“One of my guys vacuumed your car last night.” He stops with his hand on the doorknob, then stalks back and presses the keys of my car into my hand, and strangely, he kisses my eyelids. “Your eyes,” he whispers. Then he leaves.

My stomach literally aches when the door shuts behind him. I plop down on the bed after the most delicious sex of my life, completely . . . devastated. A crushing loneliness settles over me, magnified a thousand times from when I walked into that party just hours ago, hoping to make myself feel better. One more frog. No. God, he was not a frog. He was . . . something without a name. And now he’s gone. And that fleeting connection I was so certain of is gone too.

And I am truly, inexplicably, devastated.

A ton of bricks sits right on my heart as I gather my stuff from the bathroom, and when I realize it’s all still wet, I wince, struggling to pull the damp clothes over my body. I can’t replace my panties. I look around the entire suite. When I look under the bed, I swear I can still feel him in my swollen pussy as I bend. Greyson.

Fuuuuck, even his name is sexy.

“Did you actually take my panties?” Disbelieving, I go look on the other side of the bed, refusing to remember how sensual I felt when he took them off me.

While searching beneath the bed skirt, I hear a click followed by footsteps. I raise my head to face the door, and blink in confusion. He came back? He’s standing right in front of me. An ache so deep its unfamiliarity overwhelms me.

My insides flutter as I stand. His dark brown hair is deliciously tousled and it goes beautifully with his eyes, eyes that are like all the glasses in a bar that reflect the light, shining almost unnaturally on me. He’s tall and sculpted but he oozes some unnamable, almost unnatural power over me. When he looks at me with those eyes, when he stands even this far away, somehow aloof and untouchable, he only makes me want to touch him all the more.

“You forget something?” I say. I’m dying of embarrassment at being caught talking to myself like this. He makes me feel as girly and vulnerable as I’ve ever felt in my life.

“I didn’t take your panties.” He signals to a lamp and frowns slightly, as though he can’t figure out why they ended up there. They’re hanging right over the top of the shade.

My cheeks blaze bright red. “Thank you,” I lamely mumble as I peel them off the shade. “I really like these panties.”

He crosses his arms and quietly watches me slip them on. “I really like them too. They look especially gorgeous on that ass of yours.”

I slide them on and pretend to be engrossed in my toenails when he comes over and drops on his haunches beside me, and tips my head around to his. The timbre of his voice drops to a level that is beyond intimate. “I want to take you home.” My toes start curling, and he continues in that low, husky voice until my whole stomach feels like a knot. “And I want your phone number, and when I come back to town, I want to see you again.”

“Why?” I counter.

“Why not?”

“You don’t even know my last name,” I accuse.

“I know the length of your legs.” He reaches out to touch a strand of my hair with his long fingers, his eyes never once leaving mine. “I know that you’re ticklish behind your knees. That you like to pant in my ear.” He leans back against the wall and just watches me. “I know that I’d like to kiss you again. That knowing you were in that bed, I couldn’t get on the damn elevator. I wanted to see these . . .” He leans over and rubs my eyes with the pads of his thumbs. “Again. So the risk analyst in me says no. This is a bad idea. But you look like a determined woman, and my guess is you’ll be going to that bar, continuously, picking up men, until you replace what it is you were looking for. And my risk analyst says that’s far worse. Who will these men be? Who will you be picking up, Melanie?”

I feel embarrassed all over again, but I don’t want him to know, so I shrug.

“Well, it may surprise you to know that I’m not okay with that. It may surprise you to know that if any man will be doing any number of things to that body of yours, it will be me.”

The look. Oh god, the look. “So.” A probing question comes into his eyes. “Am I taking you home?”

God. I’m defenseless against that look. That look I’ve wanted, I’ve memorized, I don’t want him to break through my walls and make me cry, but I’m a little drunk and my walls are made of paper today. I bluff in self-defense.

“So chivalrous of you to come back. You’ll make my eyes water.”

“That’s right. And when you orgasm your hardest, you shed a couple of tears too.”

My cheeks flare bright red as I remember, and I roll my eyes at him. “If you say so.”

“I do say so. That was the highlight of my night.”

I strap on my shoes, beet red, and he pulls off his shirt. “This one’s dry. Put this on.”

I slip into his shirt and his scent and warmth engulf me as I watch him ease into his damp turtleneck, and it’s with complete disbelief that I walk out of the room with him, with this beautiful god, feeling his gloved hand on the small of my back, guiding me to the elevator, his eyes studying my profile with an odd smile.

“Not exactly what you imagined when you woke up this morning, was I?”

My body is so well fucked I can barely walk, and my eyes, my eyes hurt, I can’t tell him every day of my life I’ve tried to imagine him. “Not exactly what I imagined,” I say. “Today was nothing like I imagined.”

He tips my head and kisses me. Not with lust. Just a kiss.

An after-sex kiss that reaches to the deepest levels in me, pulls open my nerve endings and makes me feel exposed, and wanted, and raw, and I have to fight not to cry for real like you do when you made that last wish on your very last penny and it came true.

Men have mocked me, ruined me, used me, abused me. I like to get in verbal fights. I like to cuss, spit, scream, and be myself. Nobody has ever made me want to cry while just talking to me. Nobody has ever made me want to cry, but one lone memory and now this man, who’s giving me the look, seems to manage it.

“What’s your last name?” I whisper.

“King.” He grins a panty-melting grin. “No majesty jokes, please.”

I laugh, and then I stretch out my hand as if we’ve barely met. “Meyers.”

He takes my hand in his, his grip warm, firm, and curling my toes all over again. He lets go and pulls out his phone, typing a password and handing it to me, watching me with eyes that seem the most intelligent eyes I’ve ever seen. “Meyers, type your phone number down for me?”

I add it under Hottest Piece of Ass I’ve Ever Had.

The barest hint of a smile pulls at the corners of his lips, enough to give me flutters. “Nice.”

He writes something on his keypad and my phone vibrates with a new text.

And accurate.

I smile, and he looks at me, wearing that super-sexy almost smile.

And suddenly I cannot explain—and am not sure have ever felt—the kind of happiness I feel right now.

He drives me home in my own car, and when we reach my building, he rides the elevator up with me, walks me to my door, and brushes a kiss on my forehead as he rubs the pad of his thumbs over the corners of my eyes and whispers, “I’ll be in touch soon.”

When I slide my shaking, deliciously fucked body into my bed with about an hour to go to dawn, I can’t sleep. I play with names for his profile on my phone. Sex fiend. Sex machine. Sex god. Playboy god. I settle on Greyson and whisper, “Greyson,” the name rolling off my tongue like velvet.

I squeeze my eyes shut and feel like convulsing all over my bed. I text Brooke, Pandora, and Kyle, in a group.

Me: I just met someone. Guys I just met SOMEONE. Not a douche! He actually brought me home and all the way up to my door. AAAAA!!! Fuck you, guys, if anyone ruins my day tomorrow, I’m having your heads!

Kyle: You’ll be too busy giving head to your new man to think about mine.

Pandora: Dude. Are you on ecstasy?

Brooke: WHAT? Tell me everything!!!