by Kim Karr
It was anything but subtle.
He was anything but subtle.
I didn’t care. Suddenly, I wasn’t cold anymore. Heat roared through me like a fire being doused with gasoline.
A flash of thunder cut through the window, illuminating his face. His stunning features. Hard jaw. High cheekbones. Strong forehead. Full and curved mouth. Edible lips. And those eyes, they grabbed me and wouldn’t let go—like he saw the blackness inside me and wanted to add some light.
Ridiculous, I knew.
That smug grin he was wearing spread across his lips as he sat back down. The movement caused his dark hair to flip forward over his eyes. He pushed it away, and the gesture broke the trance I was in. Thick-lashed eyes shined as brilliant as the brightest lights I’d ever seen and amusement seemed to sparkle in their dark color.
All of a sudden I felt dizzy. Lost. Taken back in time.
He was Eros.
I was Aphrodite.
He was Cupid.
I was Venus.
I let my bag drop to my feet beside my suitcase.
He twisted in my direction. “Crazy weather,” he said in a voice that was deep, cultured, sexy.
It made me shiver.
Half a nervous laugh snuck out of me. “You’re not kidding.”
Out of nowhere, the bartender set two heavy crystal glasses of amber-colored liquid in front of stock-photo guy and myself, and it shocked me. I hadn’t ordered anything, most especially not whiskey.
“Should I add this to your tab?” the bartender directed, and not toward me.
“Please,” stock-photo guy answered.
Embarrassment washed over me. He was with someone and I had misread him completely.
Hopping to my feet, I felt unsteady in my heels. “I’m so sorry. I should have asked if this seat was taken. I’ll get out of your way.”
Moving fast, he rose to his full height. He was close. So close. Floored by over six feet of hotness, his scent hit me immediately. Something manly, with a hint of the ocean. I took a moment to breathe it in and tried not to wince when the pain in my ribs struck.
His strong hands steadied my hips. “No, don’t leave. The drink is for you.”
And I felt. Felt his touch race down my hips, knot in my stomach, and make my toes curl.
If he was Cupid, I’d been struck by his arrow.
My gaze darted up, up, up, and when our eyes locked, my pulse started to race. “I can’t. I’m waiting for a flight,” I stupidly said.
He was a bad idea.
Staying was a bad idea.
This whole thing was a bad idea—and yet it already felt so good.
He dipped his head, those dark eyes going liquid with a heat I felt between my thighs. “In case you haven’t looked at the monitors, no one is going anywhere right now. All the planes are grounded until morning.”
I laughed, and it wasn’t an act. “I know that,” I replied. “What I meant was that drinking is a bad idea when I have such a long night ahead of me.”
His eyes flickered to my lips before returning to mine. “Exactly. It’s going to be a very long night, which is why drinking seems like a really good idea.”
No alarm bells rang. Instead, I smiled. I couldn’t stop smiling.
“Sit,” he said, moving back to his stool.
For a moment I forgot everything and allowed myself to get lost in the darkest, bluest eyes I’d ever seen. Without thinking anything through, I sat back down. “Maybe just one.”
The look he gave me screamed sinful bad boy.
“Reading Hotlanta?” I asked, pointing to his bag.
With a shake of his head, he blew my comment off. “More like reading crap.”
Okay, I had no response to that, and luckily I didn’t need one.
He lifted his glass. “To passing time,” he toasted.
The way he looked at me when he spoke made my pulse jump and nipples pop. Ignoring my body’s reaction to him, I lifted my own. “To passing time,” I repeated, clinking his glass.
I didn’t really have time.
I had a job to do.
I couldn’t stay with him.
Who was I kidding? I wasn’t a thief, and there was no way I could do the job I’d been tasked with. I’d have to find another way. But for now I was stranded at the airport, and I wasn’t alone.
I lowered my glass and sighed.
“Tough day?” he asked after taking more like a gulp of his whiskey.
“Yes,” I responded truthfully.
He took another long sip of his drink and let his eyes linger on my thighs. “Want to talk about it?” he asked.
In that moment I was no longer Sarah, the lonely rich wife or the wandering mistress or the high-priced call girl I had been sent here to be. I wasn’t acting. I didn’t want to. I was just being me. Albeit, a well dressed-up version of myself, but still me.
Following his lead, I practically guzzled the potent liquor. Once I’d drained it, I figured why not talk. Setting my empty glass down, I told him, “I had to make a decision today and I have no idea if I made the right one.”
In truth, I already knew it was the wrong one.
Being here was wrong.
Being with him was wrong.
And yet, talking to him felt right.
I shouldn’t have come here to steal what wasn’t mine, no matter the reason. It wasn’t me. I didn’t earn what these men had. And I hated myself for even thinking about taking from them.
It was then I looked into his eyes and saw that very familiar feeling of loathing. Those dark eyes I thought had been filled with mirth were actually brooding.
What did he hate himself for?
I wanted to know.
Was I a way for him to forget? If so, did it matter? Either way, I wanted to be the one to ease his pain.
And I had no idea why.
He downed the rest of his glass and signaled the bartender. “You know,” he said, “sometimes I think the only way to get by in this world is to step off for a while.”
I glanced at his bags on the floor. “Is that what you’re doing? Stepping off for a while?”
The bartender placed the entire bottle of Macallan Rare Cask in front of us, and hot photo-guy picked it up right away. “Something like that,” he answered as he poured. “My ex-fiancée got married yesterday, and I was there.”
“Ouch,” I said.
He nodded and finished pouring. “Yeah, hence the heavy drinking. So what’s your story?”
It felt wrong to lie, so I didn’t. I just didn’t tell the whole truth. “I was recently fired.”
“Ouch,” he offered back with a wicked grin and set the bottle down to hold out his hand. That strong, confident, dominant hand. “I’m Sundance.”
I raised a brow. “As in Butch Cassidy?”
“The very same. It’s a nickname, actually.”
Sundance.
Hot name.
I liked it.
I took his offered hand, and the electric current that ran up my arm was stronger than the alcohol flowing through my veins. “Sarah.” The lie slipped out, and I couldn’t take it back. Then again, I didn’t think it really mattered. “And stepping off for a while sounds like a really good idea.”
He leaned closer and lifted his glass. “So, Sarah, what are we going to do to make that happen?”
My brow lifted curiously. “I’m open to suggestions,” I said, the alcohol taking over where reason should have stepped in.
He drained his drink. “Are you?”
The way those two words came out sounded like an invitation. I was in the middle of downing my glass when I lowered it. “Yes, I am. I mean, within reason, of course.”
“Good to know.” He tossed me a panty-melting grin and poured a little more into his glass.
“Why? What do you have in mind?” Ignoring my one-drink rule, I drank a little more, knowing exactly what he had in mind. It was written all over his face—in the way his eyes seemed to have turned the darkest
shade of blue, the way his sinful mouth curved ever-so-much, and the way he leaned in even closer to me.
When he was a breath away, he raised the sexiest brow in answer. “We could take this somewhere a little more private.”
I smiled back. A silent, “Yes, I’m interested.”
“One rule,” he cautioned.
Now I raised the brow. “Rules already? I don’t even know you,” I joked.
“And that’s the way I like it,” he deadpanned.
In that moment I knew what he wanted.
To be anonymous.
To be free.
And to get fucked.
I wanted all of those things, too.
He went on. “We don’t talk about our lives,” he murmured, kissing behind my ear.
I allowed my head to lull back, silently agreeing to his rule because even though he couldn’t possibly know it was the only way I could be with him, it was.
His teeth nipped at the sensitive skin of my throat, and I knew that somehow I had gone from the one doing the preying to the one being preyed on.
And I was okay with that.
Maybe stepping off for a while was exactly what I needed.
SADIE
I WAS A VIRGIN.
Not in the sexual sense, of course, but in the getting drunk out-of-my mind sense.
I’d never allowed myself to get even close to being fully emerged in the first stage of drunken euphoria, and yet tonight somehow all the signs showed I had gotten there.
My inhibitions were down. I could feel the flush creeping over my cheeks. I knew I was talking way too much. And when I reached for the rail and fumbled trying to take ahold of it, it was clear my fine motor skills were impaired.
I was sauced.
There were six stages of drunkenness. I knew this from all the research I’d done as a pre-teen the year my mother was found dead on our kitchen floor and my father subsequently took to the bottle.
Euphoria had always been the easy part to get through. Easy going. Free-spirited. Fun, even. I could have lived with that. Too bad it never stopped there.
When it came to my father, though, excitement always followed, and it brought out his erratic behavior. I never knew what to expect. The excessive drinking left my father either jovial or depressed. Either way, that was usually when the craziness began.
If he was happy, we went shopping or for ice-cream or swimming, regardless of the time of night. If his mood turned dark, he became paranoid. He believed someone was watching us, and he worried I was in danger—that I’d end up like my mother. That’s when he locked us in the house and stood guard by the front door with his rifle.
If he drank so much that he actually reached the third stage of drunkenness, he became confused, and this usually resulted in him becoming completely delusional.
During those manic times, more times than not, he ended up locking me in the bathroom or a closet to keep me safe. I hated being locked up most of all. No sunlight. No idea when the stupor would pass, or if my father had passed out and forgotten all about me.
He never made it past the fourth stage of drunkenness, when unconsciousness turned fatal, and I used to be thankful for that. Looking back now, I didn’t know if that wouldn’t have been better.
For him
For me.
For everyone.
Sundance reached for me, and his hot touch had me blinking away the long-ago past.
I wasn’t that sad, weak girl anymore.
I was stronger.
And it was the strong part of me that knew I should walk away and do what I came to here to do—for Riley. The weak part of me wondered how fast Sundance could get me to the room he’d just reserved, so I could put my trouble behind me, if only for a little while.
In the dull brass doors of the elevator, I watched our warped reflections. Sundance kissed the back of my neck with those amazing lips, and then those fascinating hands went around my waist, and the weak in me won out.
My phone started going off, and I knew who was calling me. Why he was calling. What he wanted. The task I was supposed to be doing. The wallets I should be collecting.
When I reached into my purse to attempt to silence it, the set of dog tags I always carried with me shined back at me.
Was I more like my father than I thought?
No. No, I wasn’t.
Reaching in front of me, Sundance offered, “Mint?”
I forgot everything.
No. No. No.
Sundance had somehow managed to pull the tin of mints from my bag, and I hadn’t even noticed.
With impaired movement, I knocked the tin from his hold, and they scattered all over the elevator floor.
My heart clamored in my chest, but then he said, “Oops,” and started laughing. I laughed as well, and he bent down and swept the little green tablets into the container.
On his knees, I stared down. Thoughts of what he could do to me in that position were all I could think about.
Slowly, he climbed up my body, his hands brushing over every inch of me as he did. “I hope you weren’t attached to those,” he whispered in my ear.
“No, not at all,” I moaned.
The elevator door opened and as we meandered down the hall, Sundance pretended to do a layup and launched the metal tin into the trashcan in the foyer.
I should have cared.
I didn’t.
I laughed instead at the sexy way he moved.
The air pulsated with the impending fantasy I was about to fulfill. The guy in the picture. Stock-photo guy. The hot guy I wanted to know, and not just know. I wanted to taste, feel, suck. And it was happening. It was so happening.
Outside the hotel room door, I watched those magic hands work the lock and then watched as they pulled his luggage and mine inside.
Sundance had sprung for a suite, and I watched him some more as he sauntered across the plush surroundings and over to the bar on clumsy feet.
We were both drunk.
Very drunk.
And soon, very soon, we were going to have our hands all over each other, and that meant one thing about me would be revealed.
“I have a confession to make,” I said.
He looked over his shoulder with a raised brow. “Don’t tell me you’re a virgin.”
I shook my head and laughed. “No.”
“Fuck, you’re married?”
I laughed again, loving the way the word ‘fuck’ rolled off his lips. “No. It’s nothing like that. It’s just I think you should know . . . I’m not a blonde.”
Pausing his steps, he turned around just as I tugged off my wig. It was going to come out one way or another, so sooner rather than later seemed appropriate.
Smirking, he sauntered back in my direction with measured steps and pushed me up against the floor-to-ceiling window. “Naughty girl,” he teased, running his fingers through my hair. Then he added, “But thank fuck.”
“Is your ex-fiancée a blonde?” I breathed around his steamy kiss.
He nodded but said nothing more, just started running his hands all over my body.
I did the same to him. I couldn’t touch him enough. Couldn’t get enough.
His palms landed on my breasts, and he started to tweak my nipples through the fabric. I moaned as he continued to fit his lips to mine. Rough. Hot. Wet. His tongue twisted hard and hungry around mine. The kiss was stormy, feral, and the floor fell away from under me until all that was left were wet lips—his and mine.
My thoughts spun, his kiss was rousing a passion within me I’d never felt. It had to be the alcohol.
He pushed me harder against the cool glass and slid a hand between my legs. I couldn’t believe how slick and wet I was for him. He moaned a little when his fingertips encountered the garters, and he pulled open the slit of my dress to look. Breaking the kiss, he stared. And stared. And stared some more. Then he looked at my face.
“You are so sexy,” he said.
My breath caught.
This time when our lips met, he kissed me long and slow and deep. His tongue stroked mine. His hands went between my thighs again, and he tugged my dress higher to explore the straps of my garters.
He let out a stuttering sigh. “Do you dress this way all the time?”
“Yes,” I said with a smile but then laughed and told the truth. “No, actually this is only my second time.”
“Grrr . . .” I think he might have growled.
Quickly turning me around, he pressed me to the window to unzip my dress, and then he tugged the material down with skilled precision.
Outside it was storming, and inside it was, too.
With my heart beating out of my chest and my palms pressed flush to the glass, I tried to hide my gasp. My ribs still hadn’t healed, and I hadn’t expected this level of physical activity.
“What happened to you?” he asked when the bandages were revealed.
“Nothing. Don’t stop.” My words were slurred.
He turned me back around. “What happened to you?” His words were slurred, as well, but when repeated, fiercer than before.
I reached up and grabbed the back of his neck to pull his lips down to mine. “Shhh. I’m fine.”
He stared down at me, not moving an inch.
“I swear. I’m fine. I was in a car accident weeks ago.”
“You sure it doesn’t hurt?”
I shook my head. “I’m sure.”
With that, he tugged at my hair and took my mouth in a punishing kiss. This all-American beefcake stock-photo guy had a dirty side.
I found myself wanting this more than I should. I didn’t deserve him. Even knowing this didn’t stop me. I ripped open his white shirt, the one he must have worn to his ex-fiancée’s wedding, and the buttons went flying. Not caring at all, he continued to kiss me hard, fast, savage-like. Yet his hands were gentle as they roamed my body.
My hands went to his zipper, where I ripped down his pants. After he stepped out of them, he backed us toward the bed, slow step by slow step, where he went tumbling down on the mattress.
On his back, I could see the ridges of his six-pack. I licked my lips. He was so perfectly formed from head to toe. A God in his own right. He quirked a finger, beckoning me to him. “You’re too far away to ride me from there.”