“Ariana,” I groaned, but I was pretty sure it came out more as a whine.
“C’mon. You always used work or school as an excuse anytime I tried to talk you into going out with me before. Are you, or are you not, dropping your classes today?”
“Yes, I am,” I answered while glaring at her.
“Do you have to wake up in the morning and head to work?”
“No,” I grumbled.
She didn’t seem at all bothered by my glare. “Then what could it hurt for you to live a little, Alessia? Let loose, just for one night. Please. We both need this.”
“Fine,” I huffed. One night wasn’t too much to ask for, considering I’d run out of excuses.
Chapter Two
Alec
Bachelor parties in Vegas were supposed to be wild and crazy nights, filled with stories so insane that there’d better not be photographic evidence or else the wedding might never happen. The key phrase there was “supposed to be” since the party I was currently attending was for my friend and teammate on the Chicago Cavaliers hockey team, Jason Campbell, wasn’t just a bachelor party. It was also a bachelorette party for my long-time friend, Cee-Cee Thompson. Not only were two friends of mine getting married and having their last-night-out parties together, but it seemed like everyone around me was already paired up with the love of their lives and uninterested in partying it up in Vegas. As the lone man standing in our crew, it fell to me to talk the rest of them into getting their butts moving.
“Enough of that, you two!” I yanked on Jason’s arm, trying to pull him away from Cee-Cee, but he didn’t budge more than an inch. “You’ve got one more night of freedom. We should hit the Strip and close the bars down. This is basically your bachelor and ette party!”
My older brother, Andrew, and his wife, Josie— another long-time friend of mine and Cee-Cee’s—were right behind me. “You can count us out. My wife needs her rest.”
“Rest, right,” Josie snorted. I cringed a little inside at the thought of all the sex my brother and my friend were probably having while we were in Vegas, shaking my head to try to dislodge the images that popped into my brain.
“I think I could use some rest, too.” Cee-Cee burst into a fit of giggles. “A lot of it.”
I groaned and scrubbed my hands over my eyes, wishing someone would come up with brain bleach because I could have seriously used some right about then.
“You guys are more than welcome to use the limo to go do whatever you’d like, but my bride and I are going to head up to our room for a private, co-ed party. Just the two of us,” Jason offered.
“Anyone else want to go out and celebrate without the bachelor and bachelorette?” I asked. There was no way in hell I was going to stick around the hotel tonight. Not when my room was on the same floor as the two happy couples. With my luck lately, Andrew and Josie would be loud enough that I’d have sounds to go with the images I’d kill to have wiped from my brain. Don’t get me wrong...there wasn’t anything wrong with a little voyeurism; just so long as it didn’t involve my brother and a woman I’d long considered to be my little sister. Talk about a boner killer.
A couple of guys who were childhood friends of Jason’s said it sounded like fun. Since I didn’t know them that well, I turned my attention to Ryan Forrester. He was Jason’s defensive line mate and my neighbor—and currently flying solo since his girlfriend couldn’t make it to Vegas this weekend. “C’mon, dude. Tamara isn’t here, so you don’t have an excuse to head up to your room early. You’re coming with us.”
“Fine, I’ll go,” he conceded. “But I’m not making any promises about how long I’ll stay out.”
“Because you’re so pussy-whipped it even works when you’re seventeen-hundred miles away from her,” I muttered to myself as our little group walked through the hotel lobby. It wasn’t soft enough, though, because it earned me a jab in the ribs from Ryan and some laughs from the other guys. After we climbed into the back of the limo, I poured him a shot of vodka and handed it to him as an olive branch. “Sorry, man.”
“It’s fine.” He waved my apology off and slung back the shot, handing the glass back to me when it was empty. “If the price to pay for having Tamara in my life is a little bit of razzing from my still-single friends about being pussy-whipped, I’ll take it. She’s more than worth it.”
“I still can’t believe how fast all you guys fell for your women. You. Andrew. Jason.” I took a shot of vodka, and poured us both another one. “Not a single one of you were into the whole relationship thing at all, and then bam! You’ve got eyes for only one woman and a possessive streak a mile wide when it comes to her.”
Ryan took the vodka from me and gulped it down, shrugging his shoulders. “When you meet the one, you’ll know. Just don’t make the same mistake that I did with Tamara and let her get away from you.”
“That’s another thing all three of you have in common.” I chuckled and shook my head. “I’m not the kind of guy to fall head over heels for a woman at first sight like you guys did. But if hell froze over”—I paused to glare at Ryan as he burst into a fit of laughter—“and I get all riled up over some chick I barely know, I won’t make the same mistake you all did. No walking away from her, even if I think she belongs to someone else like Andrew did with Josie. No letting her run from me because she thinks I’m a douchebag who hits on a woman all night long, only to get up close and personal with some other chick while she’s in the bathroom, like what happened with Jason and Cee-Cee. And I sure as shit won’t let her sneak out on me the morning after like you did with Tamara. I’ll exhaust the hell out of her so leaving me is the last thing on her mind.”
We reversed roles, and it was Ryan who was glaring at my reminder of how he’d fucked up with Tamara and lost contact with her for months. Then he narrowed his eyes at me, and a smug grin tilted his lips. I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable with how pleased he suddenly looked.
“What?” I asked sharply, and the limo got quiet as Jason’s childhood friends stopped talking and turned to look at Ryan and me.
“Nothing.” His grin turned into a full-fledged, shit-eating grin.
“Bullshit, dude. What the fuck’s up with you? You went from being totally pissed at me to grinning like you know something I don’t. Don’t be a douche. Fill me in on the secret.”
“Karma, man. She’s a bitch,” he chuckled.
“You’re gonna have to do better than that,” I growled.
“That’s the second time I’ve heard you say that hell would have to freeze over for you to fall for a woman. And now you’ve paired it with bragging about how you’d handle it better than we all did.”
“Dude,” one of Jason’s friends drawled. “Talk about tempting fate. You’ve got to have brass balls to put shit like that out in the universe and think it’s not gonna come back to bite you in the ass.”
Hockey players tended to be a superstitious lot, but I hadn’t expected the wealthy, preppy guys Jason grew up with to believe in stuff like karma. Not that I grew up poor—my parents did very well for themselves, but they weren’t in the same league as Jason’s family and their closest friends.
“It is,” Ryan agreed. “And I’m going to enjoy every second of watching you squirm when it happens.”
I spouted off some bullshit about being pissed off and how they were going to jinx me, but there was a little voice in my head that reminded me how I half hoped they were right. Although I gave my brother and friends a lot of shit over how insane they were about their women, a part of me was also jealous of what they’d found. I’d more than sewn my oats over the years—being a hockey player made it damn easy—but as I’d watched the guys closest to me fall one-by-one it’d grown old.
I was willing to admit I was a jaded asshole when it came to the women I’d slept with in the past, but I knew true love and finding the one for you were real things. I’d grown up with the perfect example of it; my parents. I’d just never met a woman who’d even remotely tempted me to gi
ve her anything but a good time between the sheets. Then again, I hadn’t been looking in places where I’d find the kind of girl I’d want to take home to meet my mom. Not that I judged the puck bunnies I’d slept with since I hadn’t been any better than them when it came to sleeping around. But falling for a woman who’d also been with tons of guys in the league would be one hell of a thing to handle if my dad’s possessiveness over my mom was passed down to me the same way it’d been to my brother when it came to Josie.
We all took one last shot of vodka as we pulled up in front of a popular nightclub on the strip.
“To karma!” the other guys hollered out as I sucked back my drink, making me almost choke on it. Some of the alcohol went up my nose, and I was still feeling the burn a couple of hours later when Ryan bailed on me to head back to the hotel. But I’d downed quite a bit more since we’d gotten to the club, so it wasn’t bothering me enough to make me want to leave early with him. It was a damn good thing, too. About five minutes after Ryan walked out the door I was poleaxed by my reaction to a stunning blonde who came through it.
She was practically being dragged into the place by another blonde who paused to chat with the bouncer standing just inside the doors before she tugged on my blonde’s wrist and led her over to the bar. And yeah, that was how I differentiated the two women in my mind—my blonde and the other blonde. With everyone’s talk about me tempting fate, my reaction to her should have had me out of that club as fast as my legs could take me. But I couldn’t even drag my gaze away from my blonde, let alone leave her alone in a meat market like that club.
The two women captured a lot of attention from guys as they made their way to the bar. Not that it was a surprise, considering the way my blonde’s curves filled out the tiny dress she was wearing. The dark green material was stretched taut across her heart-shaped ass, and from what I’d seen of her when she’d been walking in her tits were threatening to spill out of the top. Her blond hair flowed down her back in a mess of curls, and the strappy black heels she was wearing made her legs look like they went on for miles.
I’d been too far away to get a good enough look at her eyes with how dark the club was to know what color they were, but I hadn’t missed how plump her lips were. As I made my way over to where they stood at the bar, some douche sidled up next to her and stared at her ass while he waited for her to notice him. My fists clenched tighter the closer I got, and I sped up my pace when she looked over her shoulder at the guy. I watched as she shook her head and stepped closer to the other blonde. When he didn’t take the hint and reached out a hand towards her, I took the final strides that got me directly behind them and wrapped my hand around his wrist.
“What the fuck?” he slurred, pulling on his arm.
I tightened my hold on him and pushed him backwards so I could slide between him and my blonde. “Take a hike,” I growled.
“Hey! You should be the one to back off. I saw her first.”
I felt a soft touch on my shoulder and felt the burn of having her hand on me through my shirt. “Are you blind as well as deaf? Or is it that you’re too drunk to remember that she already made it clear she isn’t interested in you.”
“Who do you think you are?” he growled.
Glancing over his shoulder, I spotted two bouncers closing in on us. “I’m the guy who’s going to be able to stay in this club while he watches you get dragged outta here. That’s who I am.”
“Wha—” he asked, his question cut off when I released his arm and both bouncers grabbed hold of him to pull him away from the bar.
I lifted up my hands, palm out, to show them I wasn’t a threat. The other blonde stepped to my side, and the bigger bouncer offered her a smile. “We’ve got this one, Ariana. But is this other guy”—he jerked his head at me—“bothering you and your sister, too?”
I stilled, a growl rumbling up my throat at the thought of being separated from my blonde before I had the chance to learn her name at the very least.
“Nah, he’s good. He stepped in to help Alessia out since he was closer to us than you guys were.”
Alessia. At least I knew her first name if the bouncer didn’t want to listen to her sister. It was unusual enough that I might be able to find someone who could track her down with just that and a description. Lucky for me, I wouldn’t have to figure out a plan to make that happen since the bouncer nodded, winked at her, and helped his co-worker drag the drunk asshole away.
“Less than five minutes in the club, and you’ve already managed to find yourself a white knight,” Ariana teased her sister as she nudged me over to the empty stool next to Alessia. Then she scanned over my shoulder and lifted a hand to wave at one of the bartenders to gain their attention. “A coconut rum cocktail, a vodka soda with a splash of grapefruit juice and lime, and”—her gaze shot to me, and she lifted a brow.
“Vodka tonic with a twist of lemon, preferably Ketel One.”
“Make mine Ketel One, too,” Ariana added. “And Malibu for the coconut rum cocktail.
“Ariana,” Alessia hissed from next to me.
“What? After shit like that, we deserve the best. Don’t we?”
“I’m not sure about either brand being the best”—I turned on my stool and finally got my first up-close look at Alessia—“but I can’t argue about you deserving it. Because you do.”
Those plump lips of hers parted on a gasp, but they weren’t what held my attention. It was her bright green eyes, filled with a mixture of surprise, relief, and a healthy amount of feminine appreciation. I wanted to see what they looked like when she lost control, her pussy a tight vice around my dick when she climaxed while her eyes went hazy because her orgasm made her see stars.
Digging in my back pocket, I pulled out my wallet and grabbed a few twenty-dollar bills to toss onto the bar. “Allow me.”
“Oh, no. Really. I couldn’t,” Alessia stammered. “I should be the one buying you a drink after you saved me from that guy like that.”
“That’s not gonna happen, beautiful. When you’re with me, I pay.”
“When I’m with you?” she echoed, her brow wrinkling in confusion. She tilted her head to the side, and a lock of blond hair slid over her shoulder and fell between her tits.
I hadn’t imagined the way they threatened to spill out of the top of her dress when I spotted her walking into the club. My palms itched with the need to yank the dark green material up to cover those delicious swells so nobody else could see them. I’d never been one to care what a woman wore when she was out, but Alessia already had me feeling possessive over her and we’d barely met. My reaction to her was too different to ignore and as I’d told Ryan earlier in the limo, I wasn’t going to fuck up like the other guys had done when I met my one. My instincts were telling me Alessia very well could be that for me, and I wasn’t going to leave her tonight without finding out.
“You heard the man.” Ariana gave her sister a gentle nudge, and Alessia got on her toes to step up so she could slide onto the stool next to me. Then Ariana took the one on the other side of her. She leaned towards her sister, eyes similar to Alessia’s locked on my face after she got settled. “A gentleman always pays, right?” She didn’t wait for me to agree before she continued, “And you already proved yourself to be just that with the way you stepped in to help my sister.”
“But—”
“You’ll have to forgive Alessia. She’s not much of a club hopper, so she isn’t usually comfortable with guys paying for her drinks,” Ariana explained.
Alessia’s green eyes widened as her sister spoke. Her cheeks filled with pink, and pearly white teeth bit down on her bottom lip. She was sexy as hell, and so damn cute that an unfamiliar pressure began to build in my chest. It only got worse when a dimple popped in her left cheek as she offered me a shy smile. For the first time in my life, I understood what my dad had meant when he’d told me it had only taken one look for him to know that my mom was meant to be his.
Chapter Three
; Alessia
On any other day in my life, the guy standing in front of me never would have noticed me. In my normal clothes, with my hair pulled back in a ponytail, and without much makeup, I would have faded into the background of all the beautiful girls surrounding us. But with my sister treating me like her very own dress-up doll before we’d left the apartment, I looked like I belonged in the nightclub she’d dragged me to.
My discomfort at wearing the tiny scrap of material Ariana had insisted was a dress had turned to irritation when the Uber driver had gotten all skeevy with us during the ride over. It had amped up to annoyance when one of the bouncers had stared at my boobs while Ariana had talked to the bigger guy who she was friends with. Then it’d morphed into outright anger when a smelly drunk guy wouldn’t take no for an answer. But all of my frustration was worth it when I laid eyes on the super-hot guy who came to my rescue.
He put the phrase “tall, dark, and handsome” to shame. Sure, he was tall. But not to the point where he towered over me in an intimidating way. Instead, his height made me feel almost dainty...and protected. His athletic build had me wondering what he looked like under his expensive clothing. He also had the requisite dark hair, overdue for a haircut but rumpled in a just-rolled-out-of-bed way that made me want to run my fingers through the almost-black locks. And then there were his gorgeous blue eyes, framed by thick lashes any woman would kill to have. All of that added up to a guy who was way out of my league, but he didn’t seem to agree since his attention was squarely focused on me. Which was completely insane, considering how my sister was making me sound completely lame...while being completely honest about me. I fully expected him to lose interest in me before our drinks were poured, but I was proven wrong when the bartender slid a vodka tonic in front of him while Ariana and I sipped on our cocktails.
Married Into Love (Bachelorette Party Book 3) Page 2