by Emma Roberts
When the meal came to a close, I found myself genuinely sad at the thought of just walking away from all of this. In my business brain, I told myself that that was a good thing – he obviously had a skill at fostering a connection with others, and that was vital to a charity like our own. But the personal part of my mind, the one that I did my best to keep locked up, believed that there was something here – believed that all of the attention this movie star had been lavishing on me all night long was genuine and real.
"I should be getting back to my kids," I told him regretfully as he picked up the bill. He cocked his head at me, hitting me with those almost painfully bright eyes once more.
"Are you sure I can’t tempt you to stay for one more drink?”
"No, I’m driving home," I replied. "And besides, my best friend is stepping in to do the childcare for me tonight. I don’t want to leave her there all evening..."
The less said about the fact that Clara had told me she would take care of them all night, the better. Because I was starting to get a little tempted by that fact. But what kind of a fool would I feel like when I stuck around for another drink, got drunk, got flirty, tried to make a move, and was reminded in no uncertain terms that this guy was here for business and not for pleasure? No, it was better if I got out of here right now, before I did something I couldn’t take back.
"Well, at least let me walk you to your car," he suggested, getting to his feet and offering me his arm. I hesitated for a moment before I took it and allowed him to lead me outside. The strength of his arm beneath his blazer came as almost a shock to me. It had been so long since I had been addressed with this kind of attention that I had almost forgotten how it felt to be around a man like this, to feel his power as he led me out of the restaurant.
We made it outside, and I directed him to my car. My heart was beating a little faster than it had to, and I couldn’t shake the urge to lean into him a little further. I could smell his aftershave – expensive, classic, masculine, and clean – and I just wanted to bury my face in his neck and inhale it, fill myself to the brim with his scent.
"Well, this is my car," I came to a halt next to my vehicle, awkwardly placing a hand on the hood and instantly feeling like an idiot as I do so.
"Thanks for the escort." Smiling up at him, I noticed that there was a flicker to his gaze: something intent and intense. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it sent a shiver down my spine and lit a fire deep down in the primal part of my gut.
"No problem," he replied. "Thanks for your company this evening."
"Yeah, I’ll be sure to reach out to you soon for the charity," I reached into my bag, looking to find my keys. "Or, I suppose I should say, I’ll be in contact with your people—"
I suddenly felt his eyes burning into me, and I looked up to find him staring down at me. I knew what was about to happen a split-second before it did. I swear to God, time phased out for a moment, and when I came back to reality, his mouth was on mine.
It was a brief kiss, almost chaste, but it was clear that more had been meant by this kiss than just a simple farewell. I closed my eyes and sunk into him, wondering how in the name of holy hell this man could actually be attracted to me. He was outrageously perfect, and I was...I was standing here in this parking lot, kissing him, with my heart hammering so loudly in my ears that I felt as though it was going to burst right out of my chest.
Suddenly, I realized what I was doing. I was supposed to be acquiring this man for the charity, not making out with him next to my car where anyone could see us.
I pulled back swiftly, pulling my gaze away from him. He was breathing a little harder than before, and I scrambled for my keys.
"I should get going," I muttered. "I’ll…we’ll…"
I didn’t bother finishing up what I was trying to say. I just needed to get out of here. I climbed into the car and pulled away before I could do or say anything else spectacularly stupid, and I did my best to force the kiss to the back of my mind. But it was there, plaguing me, the whole way home – the heat of his mouth on my own was more than I could shake as I drove back to my kids, to my home, and to my real life.
5
Morgan
"Hey, man, you got a minute?"
"Got a few hours free if you need them," Damien, a personal assistant of mine and one of the most outrageously useful acquisitions I’d ever come across, replied over the phone line.
"I need you to do some research on someone," I explained. He fell silent for a moment.
"And who might that be?”
"The woman who runs the charity I’m getting involved with," I replied. That made sense, right? Nobody could argue with that. I was just trying to be a responsible person by making sure I knew what I was signing up for.
"What’s her name?”
"Kari Rodriguez," I enunciated it slowly and carefully, like I was speaking a prayer into being. I still couldn’t believe that I had found her. After all of this time, the woman I had been searching for was here – and she had a name, and she had a kiss to remember me by. She had moved into me; I had felt it. But I wanted to know what was holding her back, what had drawn her away when she had clearly been enjoying herself so much.
"Well, it’ll take a couple of hours, but I’ll see what I can dig up, alright?” Damien replied. "I’ll call you back once I have something."
"Thanks, man," I replied before I hung up the phone. A few hours to kill, huh? When I had all this pent-up energy that I was having a hard time shaking? This was going to be hellishly rough.
I decided the best idea would be to head down to the gym in my building and try to work out some of the sexual tension that was filling my brain and dumbing me down right now. Ever since I’d laid eyes on her as she was walking into the restaurant, I’d felt as though I was fit to burst. I had managed to keep it in, holding my flirtations down to a reasonable amount for most of the evening, but now, all I wanted was to see her again.
No, I wanted more than just to see her. It would have been much simpler if it was just that. Sure, the thought of laying eyes on her again made my heart skip around, but there was more to it than that. I wanted to touch her, hold her, feel her, and take in her breath against my body once more. Feel the power of her skin next to mine. When I’d kissed her, she had yielded against me and the softest moan had escaped from her lips, letting me know that she wanted this the same way I did. But then, she had hopped back into her car, and that had been that. Not if I had anything to do with it.
I normally worked out hard, but this workout was more intense than ever. I wanted to sweat all of this out of my system, sweat the memory of her mouth against mine out of my body. I knew it was crazy; I knew I was pushing myself way too hard, but I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. I felt as though I was exorcising her from my mind, the woman who had taken up far more of my brain space than she ever should have.
Had she even recognized me? If she had, she had played it crazy-cool. She’d claimed not to even know who I was, not ever having seen any of my movies, and I struggled with the thought that maybe she had forgotten me. That night might have embedded itself on my memory, but that didn’t mean it had to stick around with her in the same way.
She had mentioned her ex, and I’d heard the twinge of anger in her voice when his name had passed her lips. What had gone on between them? Whatever it was, they were still stuck working together, and that had to hurt. I wished I’d asked her more about him. Wished I’d pressed her to find out if she really didn’t remember me, or if this was some act that she was putting on in the hopes of playing hard to get. Either way, it was working.
The sweat was pouring down my brow as I stepped off the treadmill and headed over to the weights; I wanted to feel the burn so deeply that I would wake up tomorrow barely able to move. Maybe if I wasted all of my energy on this, I wouldn’t have to worry about using it all up on her instead.
Just as I was drying off my hands to start on the weights, my phone buzzed where I had dumped it o
n the counter; I grabbed it at once, and, when I saw that it was Damien calling, I took the call, propping it up on speakerphone so I wouldn’t have to stop my workout to speak with him.
"Hey," I greeted, my breath coming in short, sharp bursts.
"Hi." He sounded distracted. "You got a minute? I have some stuff on that woman you asked me to look into."
"Yeah, yeah, I’m free," I replied. "Fill me in."
"Alright, so…Kari Rodriguez," he began. "Most of this stuff is on the website, but I had to do a little sleuthing through some papers to catch up on the rest of it..."
"Yeah, yeah, and I’ll give you a bonus for it," I assured him, knowing that he was angling for some extra cash. I didn’t mind the hustle; he was good at what he did, and he knew it. No shame in that.
"Cool," he replied, and I could hear him grinning over the line.
"Alright, so what do you have for me?”
"Okay, so, she’s thirty-three. She runs this charity called Changing Places, and she has for the last eight years or so," he continued. "She started it with her ex-husband, and they run the place together, although they got a divorce a few years ago."
"What about him? What’s he doing?”
"Mostly just schmoozing around town from what I can tell," he replied. "He’s dating some model – much younger, obviously – and he seems to want to be photographed with her everywhere he can."
"Dick," I muttered to myself.
"What?"
"Nothing," I replied, fixing my weights so they were heavy enough for me. "What else?”
"She has a couple of kids by her ex, and it seems like she has custody of them – in fact, it seems like he doesn’t see them at all," he continued. "And she’s in some financial trouble, judging by the fact that she just took a second mortgage out on the house."
"Damn, you are good," I told Damien. "You really found this all out from just reading online?”
"Yeah, and maybe a little bit of poking around as well," he replied. "Nothing illegal, though, so don't worry."
"Okay, but I’m always going to worry when you feel the need to add that disclaimer," I remarked.
He chuckled. "You’re good, I promise," he assured me.
"I’d better be," I warned him playfully.
"But yeah, that’s what I could find out about her," he finished up. "I'll keep an ear to the ground and let you know if I hear anything else, alright?”
"Sounds good to me," I agreed. "Speak to you soon, man."
"Speak soon."
With that, he hung up the phone, and I started hoisting the weights in deadlifts. My mind was racing. So her husband had pulled the standard: waited until she had given him what he wanted and then run off with a younger model. In this case, literally. Now, she was left to raise the kids by herself and was struggling to keep her house. This guy sounded like a real prize.
Maybe that was why she had made a run for it when we had seen each other again. Maybe she was nervous – hell, maybe she saw a reflection of her husband in me, some version of a man who would run off and dump her as soon as he got bored and found someone else he liked better. And she would have had good reason to believe it, if she’d known anything about me, but as far as I knew, she hadn’t. Which gave me the perfect excuse to slide in and make sure she knew who I was. And that I felt a connection with her that overrode everything I had ever felt before.
My mind was chattering away as I continued lifting weights, and it felt as though I was tossing around feathers instead of heaving enormous hunks of metal. I couldn’t stop thinking about her: what she had been through and what her husband had done to her. How alone was she in the world? There was a chance she was dating someone, of course, and that Damien hadn’t picked up on it, but the way she had acted with me last night had been pretty far removed from what I would expect from a woman who was in a relationship. Then again, perhaps she’d been trying to sweet-talk me because they needed me for the charity.
I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to go optimistic or cynical with this. I decided, for the time being, that I should scrub this day out of my hair and try to move on. I would figure out what I was going to do about my feelings for this woman once I had gotten some rest.
I was heading back upstairs to the apartment when I saw someone hanging about in the lobby – I recognized the look on her face at once. I had seen it so many times before that it was like a sense memory. A woman, maybe a few years younger than me, with a curtain of dark hair, eyeing me with excitement. How did they keep getting in? I needed to hire better security.
"Morgan?” She approached me. I didn’t like when they used my name like they knew me. I paused for a moment.
"Can I help you?”
"I’m just such a big fan of your work," she blurted out, her eyes shining with excitement. "I wanted to come see you, and, uh, you know, show you..."
She trailed off, obviously waiting for me to jump in and take the lead. And normally, I would have – I would have taken her upstairs and fucked her quick and hard and given her a story to share with all of her friends when she’d had too many drinks. But my mind was elsewhere at that moment, and I didn’t feel much like indulging her.
"Thanks for stopping by," I told her curtly. "But you should go."
Her face dropped.
"But I—"
Before she could say anything else, I continued on my way to the apartment. I didn’t have time for this today. My mind was on Kari, not on random groupies who managed to make it into my place and imagined that I would somehow fall at their feet, thankful to have found what I was looking for at last.
I slid into the shower, glad that I had the place to myself – there was plenty to like about a place as huge as this, not the least that it gave me the privacy I craved most of the time. When my mother wasn’t storming in on me at random moments, of course.
The water coursed over my body, and I tipped my head back and closed my eyes as I let it work its magic. Was there anything better than the feeling of hot water on sweaty skin?
Well, I could think of one thing. One very specific thing, actually. What it would be like to be with her. To have her sliding into this shower with me and to see the water cascading over her body. To feel her smallness, her compact, little form pressed against my own. I slid my hand down between my legs and wrapped my fingers around my cock, feeling myself already swelling to semi-hardness. Damn. If just the thought of her could do this to me...
I focused on the sensation of my hand moving up and down my cock. Stroking slowly, I pretended it was her fingers that were wrapped around my length. I parted my lips, and as the water coursed over them, for a moment, I could almost feel her mouth against mine once more. I was hard now, achingly so. If she had been in that shower with me, I knew that I would have done anything she asked me to.
I wondered how she would have felt stripped out of that dress I had seen her in the very first night we had met. I could just picture the scene now – slowly running the zipper down her back, exposing her inch by inch as I ran my fingers over the curves of her body. I wanted to see how she would react to me, how she would respond to my touch. If it would turn her on as much as the very thought of it was getting me off. I stroked my cock harder, with more purpose this time. It had been a long time since I had felt this kind of desire for anyone, let alone someone who wasn’t even in front of me. Letting out a growl of desire, my mind raced over the thought of her naked, laid out before me, hungry for me, pleading for me—
And that was when it hit me. The orgasm was intense, rolling through my entire body in a shockwave that took control for a split second. For a moment, I could believe that I was there with her and that she was the one with her hand on my cock, making me come.
But then, my eyes flicked open, and I found that I was alone in the shower all over again. Just me. Just me and the image of a woman I hadn’t even hooked up with yet. And I knew that I had a hell of a lot to prove to her before I could get her into my bed – but that didn’t mean I wa
sn’t going to give it a damn good shot.
6
Kari
"Hello? Kari Rodriguez?”
I recognized his voice as soon as it came over the line, and I swear I nearly fell out of my chair when I figured out who was calling me. There was no way, was there? Already? I took a deep breath and centered myself, getting myself in hand before I fully freaked the fuck out.
"Hi," I greeted Morgan. "How can I help you today?”
"This is Morgan," he replied, his voice smooth and calm, like butter. Damn. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him since the last time we saw one another, when he had kissed me and sent my head spinning into infinity. It had been a couple of days since then, and I had been desperate to reach out to him and catch up – hell, just find out if that kiss had somehow been a dream, something my wine-addled mind had come up with to boost my ego.
"Oh, hi, Morgan," I tried to play it casual. "How’s it going?”
"Well," he replied. "Look, Kari, I just wanted to clear the air about something before we go any further with this project."
"Oh yeah?”
"Yeah, it’s about that kiss we had when we went out together the other night," he continued. I immediately shot my gaze around the room to make sure nobody else could possibly be listening in on this conversation. If anyone else at work caught on to what had happened between us, I would never hear the end of it. And I had no idea how Adam would react if he found out that I was actually attracted to another person. Probably not well.
"Oh, right, yeah," I replied, trying to make it sound as though I’d had so many kisses since then that I couldn’t be expected to remember any one in particular.