by Red Garnier
“W-what?” She’d been so sold on the idea that he was a lazy and languorous surf boy, she’d never imagined, never even thought about the mega-rich Prestons from Chicago. “You mean he’s from those Prestons? I thought he was a model and a beach bum and that his last name was Alexander!”
Her mind flashed back to the tattoo and the one time she’d asked him about it.
“What does your tattoo mean?”
“I have a tattoo?”
“Come on! Preston. Is that your nickname?”
“Preston? PRESTON? I told the tattoo artist it was Peyton, damn it. Now I’m gonna have to sue their lame asses.”
She’d dropped the topic because she’d assumed it was some sort of nickname and because he’d kissed her and it was only a fling and his pretense to want her name on his beautiful skin had been so sweet and because in the end she figured it didn’t matter what it meant.
Luke had fit so well in the Mayan Riviera, lounging under the sun, tangled between the hotel sheets with her, smiling at her with that sparkle in his eye, her golden angel gone devil in bed…
God. He wasn’t a beach bum. He was a billionaire. From Chicago. “This and that.” “Nothing important.” “Hi, I’m Luke Alexander.” Her ass!
And could someone please tell her what in the world the rebel child of the Preston family, a multimega-gazillionaire, was doing all by himself in a family resort playing with Toad, for heaven’s sake?
“Yeah, the guy models, all right. Merely because he loves the attention and he’s a total rogue and a total playboy with time to spare. But the man doesn’t have to do a whit to live like a king. In fact, he lives in the same building as Gary—on the top three floors.”
The woman nodded toward a man who’d been straining to hear their conversation and who was also an assistant to one of the other partners in the firm. His elbow slipped on the desk and he nearly fell. He straightened immediately with as much dignity as he could muster and nodded.
“I’m sorry,” he said, walking around his desk and heading toward them with short, bouncy steps while he clasped his hands in front of him in an angelic pose. “Excuse me, I was minding my own business, of course, but I couldn’t help but overhear you. Are you talking about my Luke?”
“You’re friends?” Peyton nodded toward the magazine advertisement.
Gary nodded. “He lives in my building. He’s very friendly! One time my dog went up with him on his elevator and the guy was really nice. And so hot I went gayer just sharing the elevator with him. Hey, did you all know he just got shot?”
“Excuse me?” Peyton was bowled over by this last bit.
She was never one to gossip but now it seemed that if she’d paid a little more attention and focused on numbers a little less, she’d have known all about Luke “Alexander” my-middle-name-is-Meaningless my-last-name-is-fucking-Fling. Oh, and did I mention I’m one of those freaking Prestons?
“Yes,” Gary said, “apparently he was having sex with some random stranger and one of the woman’s lovers got in there and shot him. Missed his heart by a hair. He’s been called a ‘Walking Miracle’ but I’d say the miracle happened when the man was born—goodness.”
Simmering with indignant rage, Peyton hastily recovered the magazine and headed toward her office. “Thank you, get back to work.”
They called him the Walking Miracle?
They should call him the Cock-Sucking Pig!
It was too much, knowing her handsome, drop-dead-gorgeous fling was the closest thing to a male prostitute. And that he was so close, yet she couldn’t see him and had to somehow find a way to forget him. It was about the hardest thing she’d ever set her mind to in her whole career and life. But still, she made an effort.
Two weeks passed, and Peyton could only lie in her bed at night and stare up at the ceiling of her small but luxurious apartment, thinking of him. She would get wet and shaky just remembering. One night she was in so much need and yet so furious at him for lying to her, for invading her life so, for branding her body with his touch, that she rose, yanked out the advertisement from the magazine, tore his face and perfect body into tiny little pieces, and flung the pieces into the trash can, only to return to her big, lonely, king-sized bed, feeling just as bad or even worse.
“Miss Lane, may I have a word with you?” Gary asked this morning as she headed toward her office. She actually liked this man very much. She’d talked to him several times recently—making sure she didn’t discuss Luke, of course—and he was a likeable, funny sort with a very sensitive heart.
“Sure,” she said, suddenly concerned as she studied his pale face. He seemed nervous.
“I’ve been invited to this huge party. It’s a major event in the party circles, actually,” he said, speaking the words to her ever so slowly as if she were a child. “And, well, if you don’t have any plans for tonight I was wondering if you’d like to come.”
She stared at him, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. Whatever did he mean by this? Was he implying that he was seeing Luke tonight? Was he asking if she’d want to go? Why would she want to see that lying, sneaky…
“I’m gay, Ms. Lane,” he blurted, then smiled sheepishly. “But at least if I bring a hot woman you-know-who will love me a little for it. I’ve been told he loves variety.”
Oh, he does, does he? That stinky, filthy…oh, she couldn’t even think of a word!!!
“I’m sorry, Gary, but I have work to catch up on. But thank you.” She touched his arm gently so he wouldn’t feel hurt by her rejection, but when she pivoted to leave, her legs wouldn’t walk. Because…damn Luke Preston, she could hardly get her mind in order since she’d met him.
She gritted her teeth, thrust her chin up in determination, and turned back to Gary with a cold, calculated smile. “At what time would this be, Gary?”
Gary’s grin was about a mile wide. “Eight thirty?”
Peyton nodded. She had to see him.
The moment Gary offered her the chance, her initial reaction had been No way, but deep down she knew it was inevitable.
She had to see him, one more time, at least to get him out of her system. And to get to see the real Luke, not the role he’d played with her. Just one more time, she inwardly promised herself.
One last time.
“You’ve been in a shitty mood all night, Luke. If you were going to be such a sour tart and be wearing a sweater, you shouldn’t have said it was a ‘pajama party,’ ” Patty, his neighbor from the third floor, said to him from across the living room of his apartment.
“Fine, I’ll put on my damned pajamas,” Luke grumbled, yanking off his orange long-sleeved turtleneck and unzipping his jeans. He slept in his tighty whities and that’s the pajamas he’d always worn to his famed and acclaimed “pajama parties,” where people came in their sleep attire and stayed all night doing whatever the fuck they wanted.
“There. You guys happy now?” he asked both his neighbors, Patty and Natalie, with a harsh glare as he kicked his jeans off.
He’d come up with this party idea while flying back from Cancún. But Luke was a little bit disappointed that he wasn’t really into it. He was in a rotten mood, and he’d been in it constantly during the past weeks.
It was as though he’d been shot in the damned head, because lately he’d been swamped with idiotic thoughts that were disgustingly cliché and extremely unlike him; like what purpose he had in life and how he’d be much happier if he had someone to share it with—that someone being a dark-haired seductress whose name he didn’t even want to remember since just thinking it bugged him to no end.
He kept thinking these imbecilic thoughts and asking himself why, for some reason, the drinks, the parties, and the girls had suddenly lost all of their glitz. It was all her fault.
Every aching bone in his body seemed to cry out for her, and Luke hadn’t realized until now that the dark-haired weekend angel, whom he’d once thought had been sent from Heaven just to please him, had been sent to him as a penance, pr
obably for having broken so many hearts when he hadn’t known better.
Luke couldn’t be more pissed with her, with Heaven, and with his goddamned life as it was.
He rested back against the sofa and glowered at everything within view while people starting filling up his pad, one by one. Models in their sheer nighties came over and fawned over him, cooed over him, rubbed his muscles, called him all kinds of sexy pet names, kissed him on the mouth.
He used to enjoy this, he really did. But now he couldn’t see why. It seemed so…superfluous. Unnatural and meaningless. He could see the looks in these women’s eyes, and he could almost see money signs pop out of their pupils when they spotted him. He couldn’t even be quiet with them as they asked in their whiny voices, “What’s the matter? Don’t you like me anymore?” They expected him to be fun all the fucking time, and to have a fucking hard-on all the time, and lately he just didn’t feel like having either.
But this was known to be the party of the fucking year, attended even by Playboy Playmates who got naked and got it on as fast as you could say “mate!”. If this party didn’t make him feel better, then Luke didn’t know what would.
So he just sat there on one of the couches with a view of the door, his arms spread to his sides like a king lounging back in the plain white briefs his family made a fortune on, and all the while he tried to tell himself that after just a couple of more drinks, nothing would matter anymore.
The women would start looking real good, all of them, and pretty soon he wouldn’t care who screwed him.
But it was only a martini later that his gay neighbor who looked like a goldfish appeared at the door, and the little man was beaming like he’d just struck gold. And at his side, her beautiful big eyes wide in horror as she took in her surroundings—was Peyton.
Luke stiffened, while every cell in his body reared up and roared for her. He slammed his eyes shut and reopened them, sure he was hallucinating, but his gaze zeroed in on her and she was still there, paralyzed and stupefied by his friends, and Luke’s unfeeling heart just…climaxed.
Surrounded by almost-naked ladies, Peyton appeared almost prim in that plain gray skirt and a matching fitted jacket, with a long pearl necklace and red heels, her beautiful, long hair tumbling down her shoulders.
Prim. And proper. And—
Holy God, he wanted to rip off that skirt, that jacket, and bury himself inside her and forget he’d ever thought it was a good idea to leave Cancún without her.
He wanted to wrap himself in that fucking hair and then take that mouth again until all the gloss covering her lips was all over his face.
His legs shook with red-hot, pulse-pounding, out-of-this-world desire, and for the first time in weeks, he got a fucking erection again, and it was so titanically hard it was going to thrust out of his tighty whities this very second.
With Herculean effort, he rose on unsteady feet, aware that his lady neighbors followed him up and wantonly squished him like the ham between a sandwich. He seized the body of one of them to shield his erection from view, and that same instant, Peyton’s eyes found him across the room. The hurt that flashed in her eyes ripped through him like a thousand knives.
In the space of a heartbeat, the vulnerable, wounded expression on her pretty face made Luke feel face-slapped and dirty and unworthy of her. He had never in his life felt so shitty as at this very moment, when he saw himself through Peyton Lane’s pretty dark eyes.
Shame roiled around his stomach until he thought he’d puke at himself.
And then, he felt anger. A whole fucking lot of it.
Oh, no, lady. She wasn’t going to ruin his life.
He wasn’t going to fucking let her turn him into a puppy like Graves, panting after her affection…
No. Fucking. Way.
“WELCOME TO MASTER LUKE’S PARTY, LET’S GET DRUNK AND GET IT ON!”
Peyton felt like she’d just stepped onto an alternate planet when she and Gary walked into what could only be called a “Playboy” mansion, all compacted into a three-floor apartment. Floor-to-ceiling windows with a striking view of the Windy City spread from one wall to the other, embraced by a huge L-shaped open terrace, and littered with people walking around in their pajamas—if what they were wearing could even be called that.
And if all that weren’t enough to shock and appall a normal woman, Peyton was completely aghast at the almost orgasmic voice in the background of a woman saying: “WELCOME TO MASTER LUKE’S PARTY, LET’S GET DRUNK AND GET IT ON!”
But all that was nothing, nothing, compared to the moment her eyes landed on Luke. The man who’d taken her in every way she could have been taken. The man who’d taken her to Heaven and now was slowly, surely, taking her to the pits.
If Peyton had seen him in this very manner the first time she’d met him, she would have never, ever, approached him to say hi, much less asked if she could keep him company. He radiated power and appeared totally…unscrupulous. Rebellious. Badass. Making her realize that a woman like Peyton didn’t stand the chance of daylight with a playboy like him.
If there had been a god of pure lust and sex in Greek mythology—without the love aspect attached to it, like with Eros—then she had no doubt that his name would be Luke Fucking Preston.
He didn’t even look apologetic when their eyes met. With his eyes narrowed and jaw clenched tight, he held one almost-naked woman protectively against him like he’d fight anyone who tried to take her away, while the other girl in a barely-there nightie pressed sinuously into his back.
A tsunami of hurt crashed over her, and Peyton could not even believe she’d let this womanizer fuck her without a condom. She gaped at the two beautiful women, the blonde with a sheer nightie and no underwear, no less, and the curly haired one wearing nothing but a sheer red camisole and matching sheer thong panties. And then there was Luke, of course.
Glorious and godlike in that classic underwear, the same one he advertised, taking her breath away just by the sight of him and that ripped, lean body that had introduced her to pleasures she could have never in her life imagined.
“Hey Gary, who’s your new friend?” a woman suddenly came over and asked.
“Oh, this is Peyton Lane, one of the sharks where I work. Peyton, this is Sasha, she’s from the tenth floor.”
Peyton smiled stiffly and greeted the redhead, surprised when the woman bent to whisper in her ear. “You’d better not waste your efforts here, honey,” she told her with a serious pout. “Gary’s gay. But if you want a surer thing you can try him.” She pointed toward Luke as he furiously slipped into a pair of jeans.
Peyton could feel her insides reach a boiling point. My God. He was the closest thing to a gigolo that she could have imagined, and yet she’d been daydreaming about him for the past few weeks as if he were her very own “Mr. Right.”
She hadn’t even been able to close the six-hundred-million-dollar sale of the tech company she had on her hands, having only two bidders stuck at the same starting-bid price. She needed to pressure, needed to close, and she desperately needed the offer price to rise at least 10 percent, otherwise her company would only take a minor cut. If Peyton managed to get at least sixty million more, then the firm’s commission percentage skyrocketed and her partners would be extremely pleased with the profit. But, oh, no, she’d been too busy fantasizing, daydreaming, and thinking about Luke Womanizer Preston to even do what she was paid to do.
Coming here was perhaps a good thing, though. Because now, having caught him almost in the act of doing God knows what strange sexual act he’d been about to do, she was confirming to herself what she’d suspected the instant she saw his picture in the magazine advertisement.
He was a liar and a cheat and a snake and not even worth a second of her very limited and very precious time anymore.
“Hi there, we haven’t been introduced,” came from a man who’d been staring at her with discomforting, laser-beam eyes since she and Gary had come in.
He was dark and frig
htening, dressed in leather pants and completely shirtless. The pants were so tight on him she could make out all the muscles of his legs. “I’m Phillipo. I live in the building across.”
She forced herself to smile and shook his damp hand, trying not to wipe her palm when he let go of her. “Hi. Peyton.”
“So do you sleep in that?” He signaled down at her work clothes, since she unfortunately hadn’t had time to go change. Clearly, she was a little overdressed here.
“No. Do you?” She signaled down at his leather pants, about to be ripped open at the seams.
He chuckled. “No, I don’t sleep, that’s the point. Leather is like my second skin.” He smiled a meaningful smile meant to seduce her. “You know…you look remarkably like Audrey Hepburn.”
“I get that sometimes,” she said. He seemed awed at the resemblance and all of a sudden it made her feel extremely good, to be getting such attention from a man—any man—in front of Luke’s narrowed gaze, just because her pride demanded it.
“Well I’ll bet no one’s told you that she’s my favorite movie star of all time. I dote on her, cherish the ground she walks upon.”
The man was coming on to her, Peyton realized, and yet instead of stopping him, like the old Peyton Lane would have under any other circumstance, she led him on, acutely aware of Luke staring across the room at her.
That’s right, Mr. Meaningless Fling!
Let him see Peyton was not pining away for him and could clearly gather some generous attentions elsewhere. Even if the man was absolutely gross.
“And you look like a movie star yourself, you remind me of…” She tapped her chin, thinking. “Let’s see, let me think of a mean, macho, motorcycle man.”
“I get that a lot,” he said, puffing up his hairy chest, clearly excited. “Maybe Grease, that sort of thing?”
“Are you kidding me?” She snapped her fingers. “Yes! You could be Danny’s twin brother!”
“Really? And you like Danny?” he prodded.
She bit her smile, suddenly having fun. “Who doesn’t like Danny Zuko?”