Sin City Seduction

by Margot Radcliffe

  “You’re under the spell of pork,” she laughed, her nose crinkling adorably.

  He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not,” he told her. “But you’re the first woman I’ve ever even considered dating. And you’ve already lied to me once, so either I really like sausage or even I’m willing to accept that there’s something good between us.”

  Her eyes widened at his admission, and he thought he’d scared her, but then she collected herself. Difficult to do in a mini apron, all things considered. “The news about your ex is just scaring you into a rash decision.”

  “Right,” he told her, meeting her eyes, trying to figure her out. They had something here; she had to know that. “Except she’s had a child before and I didn’t run after the first woman available to date.”

  “I have to go back to Chicago in two weeks anyway.”

  “You know, I have my own plane,” he reminded her. “I can come to Chicago whenever I want.”

  “You want to be in a long-distance relationship with me?” she asked, a dark brow winging up skeptically.

  “I don’t fucking know,” he growled, irritated that he was getting nothing back from her. It wasn’t every day he asked women to date him. In fact, it was never. “I don’t do this shit, but I know we’re having a lot of damn fun, so maybe, yeah.”

  Her brown eyes looked startled again, mouth opening and closing before a popping sound from the skillet distracted her. She turned to give the food a look, and he was pissed that he’d blown the conversation. Hell, it wasn’t as if he wanted to get married or some shit.

  “Are you not over your ex?” Parker asked, setting the spoon down on the counter and facing him again. “I mean, is that why you haven’t dated anyone?”

  Hugh nearly choked. “Hell yeah, I’m over her. Her betrayal, well, I don’t know if I’ll ever get over that shit to be honest. You don’t forget it when the person you trust most makes a fool out of you in front of the entire world.”

  “No one who knows your story thinks you were humiliated,” Parker said. “People look up to you even more because it means that kind of stuff can happen to anyone, and yet you got the last laugh. You’re a successful businessperson and he’s warming the bench.”

  “That shit doesn’t matter to me, Parker,” Hugh told her. “When you get to my level of fame, you realize pretty quickly that people don’t give a shit who you really are. Story or no story, humiliation or no humiliation, I’m just a walking stereotype or meal ticket to most people. And that’s fine, I roll with it, but when it comes to letting people into my life for real, I’ve been picky as hell.”

  “That’s sad, Hugh.”

  He shrugged. “It’s just my life.”

  Parker met his eyes and he had no clue what she was thinking about. It also didn’t escape him that she’d completely derailed their original conversation about dating, which had him wondering just how damaged she was, too.

  Another pop in the skillet broke the silence and her attention was back on the stove top.

  “It’s ready,” she eventually announced, grabbing the white ceramic plates she’d set out on the counter.

  “The food looks great, Parker,” he told her when she turned around again, “but you have to know that it isn’t what I want to eat right now.”

  She rolled her eyes, but turned the burners on low before hopping up on the counter and spreading her legs. With a raised eyebrow, she leaned back and met his eyes. “Your choice, Hugh.”

  Grinning, he stalked toward her once again, wondering when the last time was that he’d felt so light, so carefree. So happy. That was the word he was looking for.

  Eyes still locked on hers, he sank to his knees in front of her, which put him at the perfect height to see her sleek mound, glistening just the slightest bit with arousal. He loved that he turned her on so much. Her hands went around her back and started untying the apron, but he stopped her.

  “Leave it on,” he said.

  He didn’t waste any time finding her. Gently pulling apart her folds and touching his tongue to the finest thing he’d ever tasted. Her sighs echoed in the empty kitchen and he found her nub, licking and sucking until it came to life under his tongue. Ways to take her flipped through his mind like his own personal sex catalog, but it didn’t matter in the end because any way they did it would be the best way. She barely had to look at him and he got hard, and she’d gone to the trouble of making him a meal just on the off chance he might be upset.

  Pushing one finger and then two into her as he sucked, he wanted her to know how much that simple gesture meant to him. For a person who spent most of his time working and knowing that when people gave him stuff it was because they wanted something in return, what she’d done was special.

  And shit, he didn’t have a condom in the damned kitchen. All that time flirting with her as she cooked and he could have been getting a condom. She was literally making him dumb.

  “I don’t have a condom,” he cursed, rising from his knees with the intention of carrying her aproned ass into his bedroom.

  Parker pulled a foil square out of the tiny front pocket on the breast panel, meeting his eyes with a smug grin.

  He caught her lips in a thankful kiss that quickly turned X-rated, her legs locked around his waist and his hands grabbing up her mass of hair.

  He kissed her neck, her exposed collarbone, her shoulder, her elbow, anything he could get his hands on. He wanted to know every part of her so he could find her in the dark if he had to, which was obviously madness, but if it was he didn’t want to be sane. In this moment, where old wounds were gaping open, exposed to the light of day, he wanted to be in Parker in all ways.

  He noticed that her hand had found one of the wooden spoons in his utensil crock. Their eyes met, hers twinkling with mischief, and he regretted pursuing this in his kitchen. He should have known there’d be revenge for last night. She was going to punish him for liking it so much, and it’d been hot as hell to smack that perfect, ripe ass. The way her flesh wiggled on contact and the soft pink handprint afterward reminded both of them that they were skirting the edge of appropriate.

  “Strip me then,” he ordered, stepping away so she could maneuver his clothes off.

  She bit her lip, unsure if he was being for real. He’d let her do any damn thing she wanted to him—he was that kind of gone, but letting her think she couldn’t was just fine, too.

  After unfastening the button of his jeans and pulling on the zipper, she pushed them down his thighs until he kicked them the rest of the way off. She lifted up his shirt at the hem, her gaze catching on his chest again, which nearly had him grinning. Then he was naked and bared before her, waiting for any retribution she might want to enact.

  In fact, he turned around for her, looking back and meeting her eyes. What he found there got him in the gut, the curiosity, the hunger, the empowerment. He was a big guy, could bench press her with little to no effort, but sometimes it got old, being that person, the guy always in charge. For once, he wanted to feel what other people, who could let their guard down for a moment, felt. Be who he was for a moment and not who the world needed him to be. To not feel like a beast among men, but vulnerable and not pushed aside as somehow superhuman.

  He also liked the pain, almost missed being tackled on the field, letting those bottled-up and suppressed emotions out in a physical way. There wasn’t much like it outside of sports, but he was open. But he’d never trusted anyone enough before now to even consider it.

  She leaned forward, running a hand down his back, over his ass and down his thigh over where one of his scars stood out in white relief against his tanned skin. “I don’t like to imagine you hurt,” she murmured, dropping kisses along his shoulders as her hands explored the hard, ridged tissue.

  “Those days are over,” he told her, voice low because the moment was stretching and he was aching for her and something else he cou
ldn’t name. He’d been so isolated that Parker’s caring for him cracked open something inside him.

  “But you still hurt,” she pressed, and he could barely feel her touch, only registering it when she traced around the edge of the scar that traveled up nearly the entire length of his thigh.

  “Not so much, I just wanted in your pants that first night,” he admitted, watching as, eyes hooded, she picked up the wooden spoon again.

  His cock jerked and she noticed, an eyebrow arching up. He took himself in hand, stroking as she decided what she wanted to do.

  White teeth tugged at her bottom lip and he dared her with his eyes to do it, to give him what he’d given her. To cross a line they hadn’t with others. He could almost taste the pain, yearning for it almost as much as he wanted to be inside her.

  “You deserve it,” she told him, her grip shifting on the handle, as if trying to muster up the courage to surrender to the moment, to take them over the edge together.

  “I do,” he agreed, his hand moving faster over his dick, the rocketing sensations from his toes to his balls making his knees weak.

  And then she did it, pulled the spoon back and gave him just a single whack on the meatiest part of his ass cheek. It stung, but barely, but the sly look on her face had his cock jolting against his grip.

  Turning back to her, he grabbed the condom from the counter, their eyes locked as he rolled it over himself, shock and desire on her face as the spoon clattered loudly onto the marble. For his own part, he’d never felt so powerful; that he trusted her with something so raw of himself had him shaken, but also steadied him. He was making the leap to trust her, letting go of the fear he’d been clinging to, and it was exhilarating.

  He latched his hands on her waist and lifted her straight up off the counter and slid her slowly down his body and onto his waiting cock, the angle of her body leaving her virtually helpless, their eyes locking as her legs finally caught purchase around his thighs. Carrying her to the wide white living room couch, he laid her down and their mouths crashed against each other as he pushed forward into her. Her cries muffled as she bit his shoulder, clawed at his back, it was all madness, the battle for more, and the race toward release.

  “Parker,” he growled when she pulled at his hair, urging him to go harder.

  “More,” was all she said, bucking against him as they rode their way messily and loudly toward pleasure that had him reassessing everything he’d ever known about sex.

  When he came, the pleasure hazing his vision, the only thing he knew for sure was that he had to have her in his life.

  CHAPTER TEN

  PARKER WAS ON her second day of observing Hugh at work, which was taking place in a rented office space in Summerlin. She was crossing the parking lot of his building when she got a text from her dad again asking when she was coming home. A medicine ball of guilt weighted her stomach because she’d been having so much fun and didn’t even want to go home. The thought of going back to Chicago, being tied down again for however long until her next trip, had her chafing.

  More importantly, she didn’t want to leave Hugh yet. It wasn’t even worth denying that she had feelings for him anymore. It wasn’t casual, it wasn’t safe, and she didn’t care. Not after the look on his face when the elevator doors had opened on the day he’d found out about his ex’s new baby. He’d looked so sad and lost and completely unlike the in-charge badass he usually was. And when he’d talked about wanting a family, she’d felt his longing in every word and knew she’d wanted to be the one who made it better for him. At least for that day. She’d still have to go back to Chicago soon, but not today.

  Putting her phone and thoughts about home away, she regarded Hugh’s office. It was a nondescript blush brick building on a busy street only a fifteen-minute drive away from her hotel. His front door was glass with white block lettering on it that said Matteson Corporation. The name made her smile. No one could fault Hugh for not being straightforward.

  She knocked on the glass office door and Hugh appeared in the doorway behind the small reception area, a broad smile on his face as he waved her inside.

  Her heart caught on the fact that he was genuinely happy to see her. Hugh wasn’t shy with his emotions. It was crazy to her that he’d been without someone in his life this long. She couldn’t help the dark thrill of swatting him with the spoon. All of their sex was intense, but she’d understood then that he’d wanted the pain. Maybe thought he deserved it, maybe it was just an unexplored kink. She didn’t know the whole answer, but there was more to Hugh than the confident, wisecracking bro he showed the world. He had rivers of complications beneath the surface and part of her ached for him, wanted to take even a little of his pain away, though she couldn’t stick around for the long haul.

  “You made it.” He smiled, gesturing for her to enter the back office.

  “I did.” She smiled back, feeling shy because she wanted to be able to hug him, but they weren’t that so she couldn’t. And it sucked.

  He led her into his office, which was pretty standard issue. White walls and a drop ceiling, plain brown commercial carpeting, a sleek glass desk with a silver laptop open on top. Two plastic coffee cups were sitting next to a stack of files.

  “You don’t keep all your football stuff in here?” she teased, but would actually like to see some of it. There was nothing of Hugh in his Las Vegas house and she yearned to know the real him. The one who got depressed about a picture of a baby and massaged her feet without asking.

  “Nope, all that shit is in San Antonio. Got a big ol’ man cave for it.”

  “I’m sure it’s quite something.”

  He held out one of the coffees to her. “Caramel latte, coconut milk, half caff, no whip,” he informed her as she took it.

  His words caught her up because she’d never actually told him that was her preferred drink; he must have just remembered her ordering it once while they were out. Hugh paid attention and cared for her and it was so lovely that she couldn’t speak for a second.

  “Thank you.” She beamed at him. “I’m impressed that you remembered.”

  Hugh shrugged. “I remembered because it’s the goofiest damn order I’ve ever heard. What the hell is wrong with plain coffee?”

  “Are you an old man?” she joked, sitting at one of the two black armchairs in front of his desk. “That’s not plain coffee in your cup,” she pointed out. “You even added whipped cream.”

  “I felt so sorry for the baristas I just ordered two of your drink to make it easier for them.”

  That got her smiling. “And because you knew it sounded delicious.”

  “Get out of here,” he grumbled as he took an extra-long sip, his eyes laughing. “What kind of person doesn’t get whipped cream anyway?”

  He scooped up some of his topping with a spoon and ate it, purposely twirling the spoon around in his fingers first. She could feel liquid pool at her core, remembering being in that moment. He’d given her the power over him, reciprocating what she’d felt the night before, and allowed himself to be vulnerable in a way not many men would ever do. It was precious to her that he trusted her enough to be completely open with what he wanted.

  It didn’t help her state of mind that he was dressed casually today, which should have been less sexy than his normal suits, but wasn’t. Instead it revealed more of his bare flesh, which took her from a low buzz of sexual awareness to a “heated skin and crossing her legs” kind of need. A white polo shirt tightened across his massive chest and hugged his biceps, and the small vee at his neck exposed his strong throat and the top of his golden chest.

  “Whipped cream is only for special occasions,” she scolded, giving him a speaking glance. They had actual work to do today, and while sure, she’d already imagined having sex on his desk and licking whipped cream off his bare chest, it didn’t mean they were going to do either of those things. They probably were goin
g to later, she hoped, but not right at this moment. Because, again, work.

  “Damn right.” He grinned, leaning back in his own chair.

  “So just go about your day,” she told him, “and I’ll ask questions as I have them and take notes.”

  She’d just leaned over to pull out her tablet when his phone rang. He answered it, watching her as she set herself up on other side of his desk so she could write while he talked.

  When he got off the phone, he tossed it onto the desk and met her eyes. “Looks like the buildings in Los Angeles and Charlotte are good to go,” he informed her, obviously pleased with the development.

  “Los Angeles is a great food town,” she agreed. “And Charlotte is getting good, too.”

  “I hate LA,” Hugh admitted with a grimace he’d be mortified to know she found adorable. “Too much bullshit.”

  “Is that not where you shot your sneaker commercials?”

  He grinned his shit-eating grin that both terrorized and aroused her. Crossing his hands over that sinfully rigid abdomen, he goaded, “You searching my back catalog of commercials?” he asked.

  “No,” she all but sputtered because she was totally busted. “I just remember it from television. There were palm trees and stuff.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” he drew out, waggling his eyebrows.

  “You’re the worst.”

  “You know, you can see this,” he said, moving his hand to indicate his body, “anytime you want, sweetheart. Just say the word.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “So you’re opening two new restaurants,” she said, changing the subject with another pointed glare. “Will they be the same as the others or a different menu?”

  “Similar,” he said. “Blue Smoke is Blue Smoke, but we do try to improve and update with each location.”

  She tapped away, taking notes. “So do you see an end in sight to opening new locations? You now have eleven with these two new ones.”