by Sybil Bartel
Another text popped up.
We good?
He was so arresting, I’d venture to say he knew it. His texts bordering on bossy, I’d also bet he was controlling. I debated whether or not I should reply, but then I typed a response because I didn’t want to be rude.
I’m sorry, there must have been some mistake.
I bit my lip and waited.
The dots appeared, then disappeared, then appeared again.
Answer
Two seconds later, my phone rang.
My hands shaking, I stupidly, foolishly answered. “Hello?”
“There’s no mistake, sweetheart. I know you hired Vega. He’s no longer available. I am. Seven o’clock tonight.” Deep and captivating and so, so dominant, his voice filled my head and spread across every inch of my skin as if he were in the room with me.
“Mr. Brandt, I’m sorry to waste your time, but I—”
He interrupted. “We’ll have dinner.”
I closed my eyes. His voice wasn’t smooth or calming. It was rough and demanding, and for some reason I couldn’t explain, I wanted to listen to him speak for hours.
When I didn’t respond, I could practically hear his impatience through the line. “You there?”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“Seven o’clock. I’ll text you the address.” He hung up.
I didn’t get nervous. Agitated, irritated, pissed off, but not nervous. Nerves got you killed. The Marines trained me to assess and react. Be prepared, no excuses, no nerves.
Red hair, green eyes, she stood on my doorstep in a yellow dress and sandals. Her cheeks blushed. “Hello.”
My heart pounded, my breath was fast and my hands broke out in a sweat as I stared at her. Vega didn’t tell me she was fucking gorgeous.
“Jared?” Her voice was sweet, innocent.
Really fucking innocent. “Yeah, come in.” I didn’t want to step back to let her in. I wanted to push her against the wall, shove my hand between her legs and watch those full lips part as she gasped. Because she’d gasp. She wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with me.
My clients didn’t show up in yellow, looking like a college chick going to the beach. They showed up half-dressed in fuck-me pumps, tits hanging out, ready to get down and dirty. But not this woman. She was innocent as hell, and that made me fucking nervous.
I stepped back. “Nice dress.” Any other client and I wouldn’t have been so polite.
“Thank you.” She nervously walked past me.
The scent of fresh rain and honey hit me square in the chest, and I didn’t bother stopping the muttered curse. “Goddamn it.”
She turned. “I’m sorry, this was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have come.”
I wanted her gone. I wanted her sweet fucking innocence so goddamn far away from me that I couldn’t fucking breathe. “Why did you?” It wasn’t a question, it was an accusation. She was stunning. Young and pure and beautiful—I’d fuck her up in ways she’d never imagined.
Her hands twisted and she glanced at the door before dropping her green-eyed gaze to her feet. “I don’t want a boyfriend.” Her voice went even quieter. “Or a husband.”
That last statement touched a nerve, but it shouldn’t have. I told myself I didn’t give two fucks why she was here, lying through her teeth about not wanting a husband. As long as she paid, that’s all I should’ve cared about because that’s what I did. Women paid me for sex, rough sex. But this chick? She looked like she was one step past a drunken frat party de-virgining.
I should’ve told her to turn and run while she still had a chance, but I selfishly didn’t. “You don’t need a husband to get off, Red.”
She flinched, either at the nickname or the insinuation, but then she straightened her back and manners bled out of her. “I’m sorry, I should have clarified. I don’t want any attachments.”
“How old are you?” It was a rhetorical question.
“Twenty-four.”
My nervous tension bled into anger. “You’re too young to give up on white picket fences.”
She stared at me. Direct, unblinking, her eyes the color of the poppy fields in Afghanistan, she took me in. “You’re not much older than me.”
In age, I wasn’t. In experience, we were lifetimes apart. “Age is a number.” I never should’ve agreed to meet her, let alone take her on as a client. The second Vega told me she was shy, I should’ve told him to go fuck himself. We had a system. Vega took the tame ones, I handled the kink, and overflow went to our Marine buddy Dane Marek, that crazy fuck. That’s how it worked. That’s what we’d done for three years. We all made bank, and we all stuck to the system. Until now.
The redhead inhaled. “Right, yes, of course.” She glanced around my place. “You have a lovely home, but I should be going.” She turned to leave.
Waves of thick hair swung across her back and I imagined wrapping those red locks around my fist. My dick had stirred the second I’d opened the door and seen her, but now it was pulsing for attention, and every muscle in my body went tight. “What do you drink?”
“Thank you, but I’ll pass. Have a good night.” She took a step.
Instincts kicked in and I moved to her side. My mouth inches from her ear, I lowered my voice. “Nervous?”
“No, yes, um….” Her hand shook as she reached for the door. “I think I should go now.”
There was a fine line between seduction and coercion. My words a tool, I used my tone as a weapon. Controlled, quiet, I spoke, “You think or you know?”
“You’re not what I expected,” she blurted.
“How so?” I knew exactly what I was and what I wasn’t.
She turned and looked up at me with her big, innocent eyes. “You’re… intense.”
No fucking kidding. “You’re shy.”
“A little.” The flush in her cheeks deepened.
Desire hit me in the chest like a blast wave, then shot south. “You shouldn’t be here.” She didn’t look like she’d sounded on the phone.
“I’m sorry.” Breathy, her voice wavered. “I thought you said—”
“I know what I said.” I’d replayed every second of our conversation earlier. I’d fucking fixated on it because this woman wasn’t like any other client I’d ever spoken to. She didn’t flirt or make one suggestive remark. She was exactly how she was now. But a hundred times more innocent.
She drew in a breath through her sexy full lips, then straightened. “Okay, well, you said we should meet. We did. Thank you for your time.” Slim fingers reached behind her and she fumbled with the handle of the front door.
I stared at her sweet mouth. “You know what I think?”
“I’m sure you have many thoughts, Mr. Brandt.”
My name on her lips sounded too fucking polite. “Only two right now that matter.” I stepped closer, wondering why the hell I’d told her my last name.
She pulled the handle, the door opened a few inches and she stumbled.
“Careful.” I caught her arm and her hand landed on my stomach.
She sucked in a surprised breath. “I’m so sorry.” She bit her bottom lip and pressed her legs together as she stared at her hand. “It was, um, the door.” She flexed her fingers over my abs.
I leaned closer. “Do you know what separates fear from desire?”
Her chest rapidly rose and fell, but she didn’t take her hand off me. “I believe those are two terms that should be mutually exclusive.”
Hard and fast, I slapped my palm loudly against the door, slamming it shut. Perversely getting off on her startled reaction, I bit out two words, “That’s fear.” Calculated, slow, I dragged a finger a few inches up her bare thigh, then I cupped her face. She shivered and I dropped my voice. “But this?” I stroked her bottom lip as I stared at the thousand shades of fuck-my-life-up green in her eyes. “Biting your lip, pressing your thighs together—that’s desire.”
Her hand fisted, gripping a handful of my shirt, but she didn’t say a word.
<
br /> Still holding on to her, wishing like hell I wasn’t about to let her go, I calmly shifted her to the side. Opening the door, I removed all threat from my tone. “Fear is triggered. Desire is provoked. Leave.” I told myself not to say the next line. “Or stay and get what you came for.” I stepped back and purposely put my hands in my pockets.
The flush crawled up her neck and heated her face to a color I imagined her ass turning from my palm. “You said we would just meet.”
“No,” I corrected. “I said dinner.” My gaze all over her curves, fifty different ways to make her beg flew through my head like a fucking porno reel.
“Alex never took me—”
Anger flared and I cut her off. “I’m not Vega.” I didn’t buy four-thousand-dollar suits. I didn’t drive a fucking McLaren, and I sure as hell didn’t look like a pretty-boy model. My back was scarred to fuck, my attitude was bent, and my game was rough. There wasn’t a fucking thing Vega and I had in common besides the Marines and screwing women for money. “You want him, call him.”
To my shock, she didn’t run. In fact, she did the opposite. As if she had every faith in the world that I wouldn’t jump down her throat again, she looked up at me with the kind of trust that got a woman like her in trouble with an asshole like me. “My apologies, I didn’t mean to offend. I was merely pointing out the difference in approach between you and him.”
Approach? What the fuck had Vega done to her? Gotten his dick wet five seconds into meeting her? The thought pissed me the hell off. I didn’t give a shit that I was guilty of doing the exact same thing with my clients, but this woman in front of me was no fucking client. She should’ve been out with a bunch of college chicks, or some asshole in a golf shirt who fucked her missionary style. “You want a different approach, find someone else.”
Lightning lit up the sky and thunder shook the windows. Her gaze fixed on me, she didn’t even blink. “I didn’t say I wanted someone else.”
Jesus fuck. I grabbed my keys and my work cell phone out of habit. “Then let’s go.” I held the door, but she hesitated. Her hands twisted and something kicked at my chest enough for me to drop my attitude. “Dinner isn’t a commitment to fuck. It’s food on a table and conversation.” And enough alcohol to dull whatever the hell was happening to my attitude around her.
Her gaze went to my floor-to-ceiling windows. “There’s a storm coming.”
Tropical winds, storm, hurricane—the weather forecasters couldn’t decide what the hell it was, and it didn’t matter. The noise was going to fuck with me either way, and I needed to eat. “Then you’ll be well-fed when it hits.” This time I didn’t wait for her. I went to the elevator and pushed the call button.
A moment later, she was standing next to me. “You’re angry.”
The doors slid open, and I let her go first to give myself a second to calm the fuck down because she was right. The moment I laid eyes on her, I was pissed as hell that she’d shown up at a stranger’s house alone. It didn’t matter that I was the stranger. The fact that she looked so damn innocent and pure mattered. She’d taken a dangerous risk coming here. I didn’t want to think about the shit she could’ve gotten herself into if I was anyone else. “I’m not pissed,” I lied.
Walking with the grace of proper upbringing, she ignored my lie. “I’m not sure if I’ve offended you or if this is your natural disposition.”
“I don’t have a natural disposition.” The Marines beat it out of me and Afghanistan stripped the rest. Now I had two fucking moods, controlled and drunk. Neither was a goddamn picture, or what this girl needed in her life. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t about to test the fuck out of her. “Turn around.”
“Excuse me?”
I pushed the button for the garage level. “You heard me.”
She immediately faced the corner.
My nostrils flared, but my dick throbbed at her submission. I stepped up to her back, even though I should’ve walked away. Fisting a handful of thick, natural red hair, I exhaled. My breath landed where her shoulder met her neck, and she did exactly what I wanted her to do, she shivered.
I pushed my hips against her ass just enough for her to feel my cock. “I don’t play nice. Or gentle.” I tightened my fist and spoke against her hair. “And you’ve got vanilla written all over you, sweetheart.”
The faintest of sounds escaped her lips. “I thought… I thought you needed me to turn around.”
I didn’t need a damn thing. Not from her or any other woman. “Want isn’t need,” I clarified. I should’ve taken my hands off her because she didn’t know the fucking difference, but her soft hair was wrapped around my wrist, begging to be pulled, and I was shit for smart decisions. “Oxygen, food, water. Those, I need.” Her desire mixed with her natural scent and she smelled like a fucking dream. “Your cunt wet, my dick down your throat and my mouth on your hard nipples—that—I want.”
Her legs spread and she pushed against my cock like she was starving for it. “Oh.”
The elevator doors slid open and I stepped back.
His crude, dirty words, his huge muscular arms, the dark, brooding intent in his eyes—he made every nerve in my body ache for him. But he was right. He wasn’t anything like Alex Vega. Not even close. His hair was lighter, his muscles were harder and everything about him was sinister, including the barely contained civility in his amber-brown eyes.
He moved like a caged animal just waiting to be released. I should’ve run, not walked back to my car, but the second he’d touched me, I didn’t have the good sense to even breathe.
“You coming?”
His voice was both sandpaper and liquid seduction. It melted my resolve as every hard edge of it spread across my skin like summer heat in the Everglades. I grasped for something to say that wouldn’t give away my shameless thoughts, but I’d already shimmied on him like a bitch in heat.
I wasn’t losing the battle to walk away from him, I’d already lost.
Itching to straighten my dress but refusing to do it in front of him, I belatedly noticed we were in the underground parking of his expensive condo building. “I’m parked at street level.”
“I’m driving.” His dress shirt stretching across his massive biceps, his trousers straining against his muscled thighs, he strode toward a sports car.
I practically shivered at the command in his voice, but it was the raw power in his muscles that had me sinking in my own pool of depravity. I didn’t date or flirt or go on Tinder. I didn’t even search match sites late at night with the lights off. I worked and pretended to be happy, until I made a huge mistake with a certain quarterback. Then thinking I could reset the balance in my life, I’d hired a male escort who gave me the least amount of personal interaction possible for one hour while promising nothing except no strings attached. I knew life wasn’t perfect, but strings proved to be a painful lesson my daddy never preached to me about. So here I was, standing in a parking garage in my butter yellow sundress that said I was still a good girl on the outside.
Except the angry man with the tousled hair and face of a Greek god who opened the passenger door of a brand-new sports car told a whole other story. One with heavy breathing and slicked skin and more money flying out of my wallet than two mortgage payments, but I didn’t care. I had a well-paying job, I was living life by my rules and the six feet three inches of pure alpha male in front of me was waiting for me to make the next move.
I let my gaze wander.
He wasn’t smiling to break my heart or jockeying for my attention like a starved puppy. He was tall and strong, and my money was betting he’d be the best thing that ever happened to me between the sheets… if I let it go that far.
Two months ago, I’d been humiliated by Miami’s favorite quarterback while he went clubbing with a cheerleader as I waited for him to come home. Remembering the pictures of Dan kissing the cheerleader that were on every local news channel had me thinking dinner with a male prostitute was a much better life choice.
I smiled.
She smiled.
It was fucking perfect. I hated her and I wanted her. I hated her because I wanted her. Women were disposable. They had to be. But that shy smile and red hair had me wishing they weren’t, and that was a fucking recipe for disaster.
She got in my Mustang like she wasn’t fazed by my attitude, and my hunger for her ramped up from insane to desperate as I slid behind the wheel. New leather mixed with soft rain and honey, and I refused to acknowledge she was the first woman to ever ride in my car.
I turned the engine over and the vibration of the 526 horsepower settled into my nerves. For a single moment, I was sane.
“I like your car,” she said sweetly.
It wasn’t a car, it was a Shelby GT350. “Mustang,” I corrected as I pulled out of the parking garage.
“It suits you.”
I didn’t comment. I was watching palm trees bend with every gust of wind.
“Are you from Florida?” Her voice filled a space in my head I didn’t want touched.
I didn’t date. I fucked. I hadn’t had to make small talk outside the bedroom since before I’d enlisted. And one thing you got used to really fucking quick being an escort—women didn’t ask you personal shit. I debated not answering, but I couldn’t come up with a reason not to.
“Homestead.” Miami’s western stepsister. Geographically close, but a fucking planet away from Miami Beach.
“That’s a good place to be from.”
No shit. I didn’t comment.
After a moment, she turned in her seat to face me. “You asked me to dinner.”
The text I never should’ve sent followed by a call I never should’ve made. I didn’t fuck with shy women. I had two kinds of clients, rich, overconfident women, and bored housewives. Both of which wanted to fuck the second they saw me. “Is that a question or a statement?”