by Tessa Bailey
“That doesn’t sound like my big brother at all,” Alec said, sounding shocked.
“You know it isn’t,” Andrew admitted. “The only reason I didn’t ask her out before I even knew she was your friend was because I thought she was getting married. But she isn’t and I don’t plan to waste any time in getting to know her.”
“Shit. Fuck. Damn,” Alec swore as he turned a worried gaze my way. “You know this could be a disaster if things go wrong, right?”
“I know, but I’m not going to let that stop me,” Andrew said.
“She’s been my friend for almost a decade,” Alec stressed.
“I appreciate that Jocelyn is your friend and you want to protect her. And I know that I don’t have the best record when it comes to women, Alec. But I swear to you—this is different,” Andrew promised.
Alec looked at me again before swiveling his head to nod towards the backyard, where their parents stood. “Mom and Dad like her. A lot.”
“Jesus, Alec. Enough!” Andrew barked out. “I get what you’re trying to do here, but this conversation is over. I’m asking Jocelyn out on a date. She’s going to say yes. And you’re going to have to adjust to the fact that I’m dating your friend.”
“I’m going to say yes?” I sputtered, drawing the attention of both brothers back to me.
Alec laughed at the shocked look on my face. “Good luck with that, bro. And if you’re going to date her, you should call her Josie. Nobody ever calls her Jocelyn.”
“I like Jocelyn better,” Andrew argued.
“You always did have a thing about using full names. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that you want to call her Jocelyn with the way you reacted any time someone tried to call you Andy when we were younger,” Alec mused.
I watched as he walked away chuckling to himself and shaking his head. Apparently, Andrew had eased his concerns. But I still had some that needed to be addressed after everything that had been said.
“Why should I say yes when your track record with women is that you don’t stick around after getting them into bed?” I quizzed him before he could get close enough to touch me because I knew it would muddle my thoughts.
“Because you feel this thing between us just like I do,” he murmured. “And because you just heard me tell my brother that you’re different. I’m not in the habit of lying—especially not to him.”
I pondered his declaration that things would be different between the two of us. Weighed it for truthfulness before admitting to myself that if he felt the same fascination I did then it was most likely the truth. And even though he might be a player who was way out of my league, I knew Alec well enough to know that he wouldn’t have just walked away if he hadn’t thought I wasn’t in danger of being another notch on his brother’s bedpost.
“Say I do succumb to the temptation and agree to a date with you,” I began. “Will you promise me that we won’t end up in bed together right away?”
“Is that really something you want me to agree to? Because if I make that promise, I won’t go back on my word no matter how badly either of us might want me to,” he cautioned me.
“I’m not in the habit of sleeping with someone on the first date,” I informed him.
What I opted not to share was that it had been almost a year since I’d slept with anyone. When my last relationship had fizzled out, the demands on my time to finish up my degree had grown more and more. I’d never been the one-night stand kind of girl, and I hadn’t had the energy to find someone else. Instead, I’d focused on finishing out the school year, moving back home, and finding a job. Little had I known that I would regret that decision now since my hormones were going crazy around Andrew. Maybe, if it hadn’t been so long, I would be able to control myself a little more.
“Okay,” he drawled. “As much as it pains me to do this, I promise that I won’t fuck you on our first date.”
“Fuck me?” I repeated, unused to such blunt talk and unsure if I should be offended or turned on.
“Have sex with you. Take you to bed. Make love to you,” he listed out. “Whatever you want to call it, I promise we won’t do it on the first date.”
“You have a very dirty mouth,” I admonished.
“I do,” he agreed, his eyes smoldering as he looked at me unapologetically. “I would have thought it was something you’d be used to since you spend so much time with athletes. Especially hockey players. We aren’t exactly known for our clean language.”
I nodded my head in agreement. “True, most of the guys swear all the time. But I don’t date the athletes I work with, so it’s never really been directed towards me in the same way. It’s different when a guy says fuck because of the pain when you’re moving him through rehab exercises from the way you just used it now.”
“Well, then, I guess I can look forward to some corruption, because there’s nothing innocent about the way you make me feel. So you better get used to all sorts of dirty words coming from my mouth meant for your pretty little ears,” he rasped.
“And if I say no?” I asked, equally turned on and anxious at the same time.
“You aren’t going to say no,” he assured me. He reached out and ran a finger across my cheek, over my parted lips, and down to the pulse at my neck. “Your skin is flushed. You’re breathing heavily and I can feel your pulse racing. You want to say yes.”
“I do,” I admitted.
“Then just fucking do it,” he commanded. “Tell me you’ll go to dinner with me tomorrow.”
“Yes.”
His hand moved around to grip the back of my neck as we stood there looking at each other. “You have no idea how much I want your mouth right now, but there’s no way in hell my first taste of you is going to be here in my parents’ backyard with everyone looking on.”
When he loosened his hold, I glanced around to see that he was partially right. Most of the people weren’t paying attention, but his mom was studying us with a big smile on her face.
“Your mom certainly seems happy to see the two of us together over here,” I told him.
“Considering she was trying to talk Alec into asking you out before you got here, that doesn’t surprise me very much,” he admitted. “She likes you.”
“I like her too. Always have,” I said. “But you do know there have never been feelings like that between your brother and me, right?”
“I know he doesn’t see you that way, and I’m glad to hear you don’t either. I’m not sure it would have mattered to me either way, sweetheart. My brother and I have never fought over a girl before. Ever,” he stressed. “But I’ve thought about you for more than a month and you’ve never been his girl, so I wouldn’t have let any unrequited feelings on your part stand in my way of having you. I would have just had to work that much harder to wipe them out of your mind.”
I sighed at his use of that term of endearment, as cheesy as it probably would have sounded coming from anyone else. “No need. There’s nobody for you to wipe from my mind.”
“Keep acting like this and I’m not going to want to let you go,” he warned.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Acting like what?”
“Part of the reason I never bothered with relationships before is I have no tolerance for the games women play,” he explained. “You just had the perfect opening and didn’t bother with any of the bullshit. Didn’t try to use my brother to make me jealous. Or my mom to push for a commitment of some kind.”
“It’s only been a day,” I chided him.
“Hasn’t stopped other women from looking for a weakness they can take advantage of.”
“I’m not like that,” I assured him.
Andrew pulled my body closer to his and wrapped his arms around me. I relaxed into his embrace, enjoying the closeness of this moment. “I hope like hell you live up to the promise of you.”
“Don’t put me up on a pedestal just yet, Andrew,” I warned. “Everyone has flaws. I’m sure there will be lots of things about me tha
t you don’t like.”
“I can’t wait to discover them all,” he replied. “Starting tomorrow night with dinner. I’ll pick you up at six.”
“That’s pretty early for dinner.”
“You might not do it, but I sure as hell am going to push the advantage when I have it. And I want as much time as I can possibly get with you. So it’s six. End of discussion,” he told me fiercely.
Instead of arguing like I probably should have, I just nodded in agreement. I’d given him an inch when I’d said yes and he’d taken a mile.
Chapter Six
Andrew
Letting Jocelyn drive away from my parents’ house yesterday evening after the barbeque had been harder than I’d expected it to be. I’d never had a problem walking away from a woman before, certainly not one I hadn’t even fucked yet. But something about her shoved me right to the edge of my control. It called to a savage part of me that wanted to act like a Neanderthal and grab her by the hair so I could drag her to my cave. It certainly wasn’t a comfortable feeling, but damn, she made me feel more alive than anything else had since I’d left hockey.
I should probably be scared of the effect she had on me, but I was too busy looking forward to our date to worry about it. I couldn’t help but think there was a reason she made the primal man buried deep inside sit up and take notice of her. Hockey players were an incredibly superstitious lot, and I was no exception. As much as I liked to control the world around me, I still believed that some things were just meant to be.
When I’d stepped on the ice for the first time, I’d felt an immediate affinity even though I was only three years old. My parents always told me that the skating party they’d taken me to for a cousin’s birthday had been fate because I’d fallen in love and pestered them to get me back on the ice. My dad had called around and found a learn-to-play hockey clinic and the rest was history. I’d found my passion.
Then, when I was twenty-five, my financial advisor suggested I invest in something local and throw my name on it so I could take full advantage of my popularity in Chicago. The idea sounded crazy to me at the time, but then my dad mentioned that a friend of his was looking to sell his bar because he was getting older and didn’t have the time to devote to it like he needed in order for it to be successful. The deal was too good to pass up, so I agreed to buy the bar and renamed it The Blue Liner. I got tons of free press from the local papers, and the place was packed most nights.
Once I realized my manager was running it into the ground and hired Mark to help me out, I had a thriving business on my hands. One I added to as other deals came my way. I went with my gut instincts on each one and they never seemed to fail me. I just hoped those same instincts were driving me now and not just the fascination my cock had with Jocelyn. I never let my dick override my common sense, and I didn’t really think it was now.
When I’d told my brother that this was different, I’d been vastly understating the effect she had on me. She called to me at so many different levels than any woman who had come before her. I didn’t want to just fuck her brains out. For the first time ever, I wanted to spend time getting to know what a woman wanted inside and outside of bed. And I was willing to fight dirty to get what I wanted if I had to when, before, I would have walked away at the slightest sign of resistance.
There was a driving need inside me to make Jocelyn mine in as many ways as I possibly could. I wasn’t sure if it was because I had denied myself the chance when I’d thought she was taken, but I didn’t think so. The same instincts that had driven me on the ice for hockey and led me to make the right business decisions screamed that she was supposed to be with me. That there was a reason why I’d resisted relationships in the past. And that reason’s name was Jocelyn Devereaux.
I painstakingly arranged the details for our first date. I figured that, if I was going to do this, I might as well give it all I’ve got because failure was never an option for me. If my gut was right about what she could mean to me, I didn’t want to mess this up. Plus, I didn’t want to have to put up with the shit I’d hear from my mom and brother if I half-assed this date and they found out.
Not that I planned to let them factor into my love life. Ever. Even if they decided to stick their meddlesome noses into our business because they cared about Josie. I’d avoided their questions when I’d left the barbeque, and I hadn’t picked up when Alec had called me today. I needed to explore this thing further with her before I knew how I wanted to handle him.
Luckily, the day went by quickly enough. I spent a couple of hours in the morning working out to blow off the steam I wanted to burn with Jocelyn in my bed. Unfortunately, I had already promised her that it wouldn’t happen tonight. Delayed gratification wasn’t my thing, and the thought of her in my bed had my cock hardening over and over again throughout the day. I finally relented and stroked myself to a vivid daydream of her sucking me off until I exploded all over my shower walls. I wasn’t happy about having to resort to my hand for satisfaction and decided then and there that I’d make Jocelyn pay for it someday soon.
Jocelyn had texted me her address this afternoon, and as six o’clock rolled around, I was pulling into her driveway. The two-story, white house was larger than I’d anticipated, with a white picket fence out front and a two-car garage. As I stepped out of my car, Jocelyn hurried out the door and met me at the bottom of the steps.
I’d thought she was beautiful before, but she blew me away tonight all dressed up for our date. Her hair was arranged in soft waves that cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. The blue in her eyes looked darker with smoky makeup accenting them. Her plump lips were painted a deep, rosy red that immediately made me think of them wrapped around my cock. To top it all off, she’d chosen a black dress with a plunging neckline that showed off her amazing figure.
She was tiny compared to my six foot two inches—not even five foot six if I had to guess. It was obvious that she worked out regularly since her body showed the definition only exercise could give her. Considering her job, that made sense. But what drew my gaze and held it were her tits. They were more than a generous handful, even for a man as large as I was. And the dress showed them off in a way that neither of the other outfits I’d seen her in had done previously. It was going to be hellishly difficult to keep my hands and mouth off them tonight. It was another way she was torturing me without even realizing, but I’d make sure she understood the cost of her teasing soon enough.
“Hi,” she breathed out as I grasped her hands in mine.
“You didn’t let me follow tradition and pick you up at your door,” I chastised her.
I didn’t like the look on her face as she glanced back at the house while frowning.
“I just moved back to town that night Cee-Cee dragged me to your club. I haven’t found an apartment yet and my dad got back into town this afternoon.”
“And is that a problem?” I asked. “Your dad being here and you going on a date with me?”
“Not the way you think,” she assured me. “My relationship with my dad is complicated though.”
I waited for her to say more, but she didn’t expand upon her answer at all. I let it go since I was going to learn her secrets eventually. And worse-case scenario, I could always pump my brother for information if I got too impatient. Even if it meant that he’d make me pay for it. I had a feeling she’d be worth it in the end.
“Sorry to hear that,” I muttered as I led her to the car and helped her into the passenger’s seat. The hem of her dress rode up her thighs as she tucked her legs inside and I paused to fully appreciate the sight before closing the door and making my way to the driver’s side. “You look amazing tonight,” I complimented her as I started the engine.
“Thank you,” she murmured, blushing at my compliment. Her gaze swept over my chest and down my thighs. “You’re not too shabby yourself.”
I chuckled lightly at her faint praise. “I should have thought to ask this last night, but you aren’t a vegetar
ian or anything, are you?”
“No, I definitely like my meat,” she replied, and her blush deepened as she must have realized exactly what she’d just said.
“Good to know. I’ll keep that in mind, but not for tonight since you made me promise no sex,” I teased. “But I did book the chef’s table at my steakhouse.”
“I’m assuming Rourke’s is yours?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I answered. “I hope that’s okay with you for tonight.”
“It sounds perfect,” she agreed. “I’ve never eaten there before, but I’ve heard great things about it.”
We talked about how I’d fallen into owning restaurants and bars. Our conversation had just turned to her new job with the Cavs when I pulled up at Rourke’s. The valet opened the door for Jocelyn and helped her out before I could make my way around the car. I glared at him when I realized that his hand was still on her arm and his eyes were resting on her cleavage. Then I growled lightly and his gaze drifted up to me. A panicked expression crossed his face as he caught on to the fact that he’d been checking out my date in front of me and I’d busted him for it.
He gulped as I handed him my keys. Not a single word was exchanged, but I knew that he understood my displeasure as he scurried to park the car without glancing at Jocelyn again. I’d never displayed a single ounce of possessiveness for a woman before, but that didn’t mean that I was going to put up with anyone ogling Jocelyn now.
The knowledge should have startled me, but my display of jealousy sparked that inner caveman that never seemed to be far from the surface when Jocelyn was around. I placed my hand on her lower back as we walked into the restaurant in a gesture that was meant to mark her as mine to any man who was looking. She looked too damn sexy in her little black dress and I didn’t want anyone to get any ideas about her. She was with me and I intended for it to stay that way for as long as I wanted her.
I’d arranged everything for a special evening in advance, so we bypassed the hostess stand and went straight to the table. We were near the kitchen, in a secluded corner. There was a vase of flowers on the table, a mixture of the stereotypical red roses and blue iris that had made me think of her eyes when I’d stopped at the florist. I’d requested extra candles be lit to add to the romantic mood I was trying to set. I also asked that there was a bottle of Cristal on ice waiting for us.