Vibrizzio (The Big V #1)

by Nicki Elson

  “Good,” he whispered, his breath hot against her neck. Her eyes flew open with a need to reinforce that there were no ancient artifacts around them. The guitar and sax morphed together and eventually gave way to a persistent beat of percussion and cymbals. When more instruments joined them, Hayden chuckled. “Looks like 80s tunes are going to be our thing.” It was a remix of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love.”

  He guided her to turn around and pressed into her backside. She kept her eyes open and moved with him, trying to forget that anyone else was watching them—though observation was the entire purpose of this exercise.

  “Come on, relax,” Hayden said. “You’re too stiff.”

  The only way she was going to get through this was to pretend. She’d already been able to get past one night of erotic Hayden fantasies; surely a few minutes of wanton, provocative dancing wouldn’t make a difference. Her lids again fell shut, and she and Hayden were back in the Egyptian room. His hands stayed on her hips, holding her to him while he directed their rhythm. Under his sure guidance, she relaxed and gave herself over to the steady, seductive beat, raising her arms overhead and crossing them at the wrists. Hayden stroked her sides, one hand moving to stretch across her stomach, which she sucked in immediately, engaging her core to move with the music and with him. Yeah … she’d show those bitches what sexy was.

  When he spun her around to face him, she opened her eyes, and they immediately met his. He kept his gaze steady on her while his hand at the small of her back urged her forward. With her hips pulsing in time with his, she pressed further and further to him, sliding up one of his thighs until it was held tight between both of hers. She couldn’t possibly get any closer without sinking into him. Hayden’s heat surrounded her, cocooned her, and she no longer had to think to move. No body part was distinguishable from any other; they were just Hayden and Lyss, and they flowed together like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  The beat faded, giving way to a tinny, synthetic strain, and Hayden laid a quick, wet kiss on the side of her neck. “Absolutely brilliant,” he murmured.

  Grabbing her hand, he led her back to the bitches, who didn’t say a word, just stood there with their glossy mouths pressed into a scowl as they pushed Lyssa and Hayden’s things toward them. Hayden took the coats, handing Lyssa hers and folding his over his arm.

  “Your lesson for the day, ladies,” he said, “is that you don’t need to dress like a prostitute to be sexy as all hell.” To hide her laugh, Lyssa turned and started walking toward the door, but before her partner followed, she heard him say over the music, “I could stare at that nicely rounded ass all day long!”

  Outside, they pulled on their coats, laughing, and Hayden said, “I’ve gotta get you on a dance floor outside of a work function more often. That was … hot.”

  Lyssa flushed. The heat of her skin collided deliciously with the cold air. As they began their short walk to the hotel, she said, “It was chivalrous of you to defend my gender-identity back there, but you didn’t need to. Five years ago, something like that might’ve bothered me, but now … ” She shrugged. “Now I feel bad for people like that, permanently stuck in high school mean-girl mode.”

  “The dance was still pretty fun though, no?”

  She smiled. “Yes, it was fun. But really, you could’ve stayed without me.”

  “I have no interest in spending time with nasty women like that. And I’ve got Roni to tide me over until I find a worthy new recruit.”

  “So there’ll be new recruits?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is it Roni’s age that keeps you from getting more serious with her?”

  “Her age? No. That doesn’t bother me.”

  “No?”

  “Why would it? She’s got decades of experience packed into that firm, bitable bod.”

  “Then it’s just a sexual attraction with her?”

  “No, there’s definitely more than the physical there. She’s a great woman all around. I really like her.”

  “So … I don’t understand. Why haven’t you ever tried to make it more than a casual thing? Is it because she lives out of state?”

  “Wrong again. The world has become a very small place, and Atlanta isn’t that far to begin with.”

  “What’s holding you back then?”

  He gave her a sideways glance as they reached the front of their hotel. “You’re asking me to reveal a piece of my soul. That comes at a price.”

  She stepped into the open section of the revolving door, turning toward him to ask, “What’s the price?”

  “A piece of yours.” He raised a challenging eyebrow.

  “Which piece?”

  “Any piece you choose.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I guess there’s no point in trading bits of our souls now that we’ve made it back,” Lyssa said to Hayden as soon as he completed his rotation through the revolving door and joined her in the dimly lit lobby.

  “Pool’s open for another two hours,” he said. “Change and meet me there—I’ll bring the beer.”

  “Don’t you need to prepare for the meetings tomorrow?”

  “Nope. All done, and we can review on the train to D.C. tomorrow morning.”

  “What about your beauty rest?”

  “The night is young. We’ll be sleeping by eleven. Unless, of course, you have special plans with Andre Agassi.” He gave her a teasing tilt of his head.

  “He has an actual name, you know.”

  “Yeah? What is it? Wait, no, save it for poolside soul-spilling.” Lyssa opened her mouth to continue her protest, but he stopped her with, “You wouldn’t abandon your partner on the very evening he got callously dumped, would you?” He blinked faux puppy dog eyes, and although she knew he was full of it, she suspected some truth behind his joking.

  Huffing out a breath, she said, “Fine. But after that, this little Baltimore crawl is over.”

  His lips spread wide in a smile. “Great. See you in a few.” Winking, he headed over to the convenience market by the front desk while she went to the elevators.

  Once in her room, she brushed out her hair and pulled it up into a high ponytail. Then she changed into a cami and chose sweatpants instead of jeans. She could easily roll them up to dangle her feet in the water. It wasn’t like she’d thought to pack a bathing suit for a work trip, so she was surprised to find Hayden swimming laps when she arrived at the pool. He reached the edge and stopped, folding his arms over the gutter and kicking his feet behind him. Fat drops of water spilled from his short black waves now plastered to his forehead, running down to get caught in the stubble of his new beard. He wiped a hand over his whiskers to squeegee out the water.

  Nodding toward a six-pack on one of the round, frosted glass tables, he said, “Help yourself.”

  She continued looking down at him. “You’re wearing swim trunks?”

  “It’s the customary attire for a swimming pool.”

  “No, I mean, why do you even have them for a business trip?”

  “I try to work in a swim every morning when I stay somewhere with a pool.”

  “You do?”

  He shrugged. “Kind of small for a real workout, but it’s better than nothing.”

  She turned her attention from him, taking two towels from the nearby stack and laying them at the edge of the hot tub to make a dry place to sit. Then she doubled back to the beverages.

  “Would you grab me one?” Hayden asked.

  “A beer or a towel?”

  He smiled and waded toward the ladder. “Both.”

  She grabbed a towel and two beers, turning in time to see Hayden lift his wet and half-naked body out of the pool. Oh, what she wouldn’t have given for a pair of mirrored sunglasses right then. That way she could’ve given his magnificent physique more than a cursory glance as he approached to snatch the towel from her hand. From what she’d gleaned, the reality of Hayden struck dangerously close to Fantasy Hayden.

  Moving
to the hot tub, Lyssa rolled her sweats to above her knees and lowered to her towels while Hayden settled into the water, sitting on the bench across from her. He raised his arms to his sides and rested his elbows on the ledge while one hand gripped the beer Lyssa had given him. As she dipped her legs into the warm water, she couldn’t help but notice the way its tiny waves lapped at the flat, firm planes of Hayden’s chest, licking his stiff nipples and spilling over his smattering of dark hair. Keith’s chest had been completely smooth, so it’d been a long time since Lyssa had raked her hands through a lush, manly thicket.

  She didn’t realize how lost in that train of thought she was until Hayden broke her out of it.

  “My dad loved my mom,” he said. “Correction: my dad still loves my mom.”

  “That’s … nice?” She wasn’t sure where he was going with this.

  “No, that’s horrible.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my mom doesn’t love him. When I was eight, she left my dad for another man. I think that guy might’ve loved her too, not sure because he wasn’t around very long before Mom gave him the heave-ho too.”

  Lyssa watched Hayden take a long drink, and it finally clicked in her brain that he was embarking on his soul spilling. When he swallowed and clinked the bottle onto the dry tile next to him, she ventured, “So you take after her, and that’s why you can’t settle on one woman?”

  He gave an ironic grunt. “I wish. I take after my dad, and letting my mom into his heart practically destroyed him.”

  “Aha, you think that was his fatal mistake, and you’re determined to not repeat it.”

  “Eeegh!” he exclaimed, imitating the sound of a game show buzzer when a contestant answered wrong. He brought his bottle back to his lips, the signs of a cocky smirk twitching the corners of his mouth.

  Lyssa flicked her foot out of the water, sending a light cascade of drops splashing onto him, and he laughed, nearly spitting out his beer into the soothing, chemically treated water. “Would you please get to the point?” she shouted.

  “Okay, so you’re half right—I’m determined to not repeat his mistake. But his mistake wasn’t letting a woman into his heart. It was letting the wrong woman in.”

  “And you think Roni’s the wrong woman. That’s why you don’t want to get serious with her?”

  His shoulders lifted in a prolonged shrug. “I dunno. Tough to say, but so far I haven’t seen or felt anything to make me certain she’s worth the risk.”

  “So you’ll continue spreading out the risk with other women until one stands out and proves herself worthy of more—oh my God! Like the wildcard investor pool! So … this whole idea is based on the schematic for your love life?”

  He chuckled. “Never thought about it like that but yeah, looks like it is.” Lyssa took a long swig of her beer, congratulating herself on the breakthrough. While she swallowed, Hayden crooned, “Quid pro quo,” and the carbonation burned its way down her throat.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked.

  “I said lady’s choice.” He reached his bottle forward as if to toast her, so she braced her toes on the watery bench beneath her, stretching forward to tap the mouth of her bottle against his.

  “I say we kill these, open another, and then we’ll see which confession I land on,” she suggested.

  “Deal.”

  They chugged what they had left, and Lyssa hopped up to bring two more bottles over. She twisted his open and handed it to him before resuming her seat and taking a sip of her own drink. “Since you’ve let me in on why you choose to date so many women, I’ll tell you why I choose to date none. Men, not women.” She giggled, giving away the fact that all the alcohol she’d consumed that evening was starting to hit her.

  Hayden tapped the bottom of his new bottle on the surface of the water, tilting his head and watching her.

  “Okay, so, why Keith—the programmer—and I broke up.” Nerves caused her to push her calves straight out in front of her and splashy-splash as she fidgeted. “I’d become rather … er, fond of Andre Agassi, and Keith was intimidated, I guess. He told me to make a choice—either him or it. I chose it.”

  She’d been watching the bubblegum pink of her enameled toenails but now raised her eyes to Hayden’s. She saw something tender in his gaze with not a hint of the teasing she’d been prepared for.

  “The thing is, I wanted to choose Keith. I wanted to tell him I’d gladly chuck the stupid plastic into the trash and be his. But the way he was glaring at me, so determined, I could see it—he was seriously ready to throw me aside over something so stupid. And that’s when I changed my mind. If he was so ready to dump me over something so silly, then he couldn’t possibly have cared for me as much as I’d thought he had.” She pulled her shoulders up sharply and gripped the ledge, clamping her eyelids together to hold back the senseless tears that unexpectedly sprang forward. “So I told him to take a hike. And I’m better now, steadier. I really am.”

  “But you’re still choosing double A over real men.”

  She opened one eye and looked at him. “Yeah, because real men are always going to choose their egos over me.” She opened the other eye and reached unsteadily across the water to toast, but Hayden didn’t return the gesture, so she pulled her bottle back and sucked down half of what was left.

  “You said he had a name.”

  “What?”

  “Andre. You said he, it, had an actual name.”

  “He does.”

  Hayden had lifted his bottle and now held it to the side of his mouth, keeping his gaze steady on her as he tilted a healthy dose of beer into his mouth.

  “Vibrizzio. His name’s Vibrizzio.”

  “Because he—”

  “Vibrates. Yes. Not the cleverest of names, I know, but there it is.”

  “And he’s also Italian, apparently.” She could see that Hayden made a genuine effort to not laugh, but he didn’t succeed.

  “Hey!” she shouted, kicking her foot out and lobbing a deluge of water onto him. “I didn’t laugh at your bared soul.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you’re right.” He held his free hand out to her. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” And then he started laughing again and his outstretched hand sank below the surface.

  Giving up, she pulled her heels all the way back against the wall of the tub, failing to keep the smile from rising to her own lips even as she tried to scowl at him.

  He eventually recovered, apologizing again, and said, “I guess we’re both fucked up in our own way.”

  “Yeah,” Lyssa said, lifting her bottle and saying before she poured, “But your fuckeder.” She made the mistake of laughing at her own joke a few seconds too late, and the beer bubbles rushed up her nose and out, stinging her membranes the whole way and sending her into a sputtering cough.

  “Yeah, baby!” Hayden howled. “That is sooo sexy. Where are those bar bitches now?”

  Lyssa threw her hands to her face, letting her pain and embarrassment calm before muttering, “Shut up.”

  They exchanged teasing splashes, and Hayden announced that he was pruning. He rose from the water, and this time, Lyssa let herself surreptitiously enjoy the view while he toweled off and walked across the room. With the towel wrapped around his waist and two bottles in hand, he returned and sat next to Lyssa, dropping his calves back into the water. While he twisted off the beer caps, he said, “Here’s where we are now—where do you see yourself in five years?”

  Pinching the bridge of her nose, Lyssa said, “Still hurts too much to talk. You go first.”

  “Okay. In five years, I hope to be managing portfolios with an investment firm.”

  “Sounds doable.”

  “Yep. And it almost happened far earlier than expected.” He lifted his bottle to his lips, giving Lyssa a sneaky sideways glance, which she responded to with a questioning look. Lowering his drink, he explained, “When Carlo called from Boston that afternoon, it wasn’t just to tell me that the Bell Funds team ha
d split. He offered me a job.”

  Lyssa’s eyes opened wide, and her mouth fell open.

  “Yeah, that was kind of my reaction too. The position he offered was as an analyst with the intention of moving me up to portfolio manager within two years. My dream job, essentially.”

  “Why didn’t you take it?”

  “The sting of betrayal. Loyalty to DH. Not wanting to screw my bright, young protégée out of the chance to learn from me.” He winked, and she leaned her shoulder into him for a teasing nudge.

  “What about personally? How many women do you suppose will be in your harem in five years?”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “Hard to say. But you seem to be perfectly able to talk now, so your turn.”

  Lyssa twisted her lips and watched her toes, considering the question. She wasn’t one to make long-term career goals, just worked hard and took opportunities when she saw them. “I wouldn’t mind still being in consulting, I guess. As an associate, of course. But investment management could be interesting too.”

  “Flexibility. That’s good. But you know, having an MBA will help you along no matter which route you take.” When her only response was an eye roll, he asked, “What about personally?”

  “In five years … I don’t know. But in ten I might want to be married, have a couple kids.”

  “That’s going to be pretty difficult to do without a man, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged. “All I need him for is fertilization and financial support so that I can maybe stay home with the kids while they’re little. Perhaps I’ll find me a nice airline pilot—he’ll come with the added bonuses of being gone all the time plus free flight benefits.”

  “Nice. That’s all women need men for? Sperm, a paycheck, and free flights?”