by Nina Levine
I eye the guy he’s grinding all over and don’t doubt he’s staying. “I’ll be back.”
Leaving them, I make my way through the mass of bodies on the dance floor, my mind swirling with the same electricity racing through my body. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like this. Like maybe the world isn’t a bad place. Like maybe I could have some good in my life.
I’m almost off the dance floor when I spot him.
Wilder.
I slow down and blink, thinking I must be imagining him.
But I’m not.
I’m not imagining those jeans of his that make me wanna beg him to turn around so I can check out his ass, or that black tee of his that makes me wish I had Go-Go-Gadget arms so I could have it off him already.
I’m also not imagining the heat he’s watching me with.
Or the way my body is responding to that heat.
I can’t even deny it or talk myself out of acting on it.
All I can do is admit that shit’s about to get messy between Wilder and me.
12
Wilder
Fuck me.
Scarlett knows how to take a little black dress and turn it into a weapon.
At this point, I know she could wear anything and kill me with it, but this dress she’s got on tonight? It’s next level. Short, in that it just covers her ass, and tight, as in I bet it’d rip if she bent over, it forms a V between her breasts and refuses to let my gaze be distracted by anything else.
She’s also got hair and make-up going on that’s hot as fuck, but it’s none of that or the dress that causes my gut to tighten.
It’s the look in her eyes. The ease in her body. The smile on her face.
And hell, it’s the way she’s looking at me like she’s happy to see me.
“Paul didn’t tell me you were coming,” she says when she reaches me.
He failed to mention her presence to me, too, when he texted asking for a lift home. He doesn’t want a lift home at all. “You look like you’re having a good night.”
“The best.”
Fuck, seeing her like this is like seeing something you never thought you’d lay eyes on in your lifetime.
Before I can say anything else, she takes hold of my arm and says, “Come, and I’ll buy you a drink.”
She then drags me to the bar, where we wait in the crowded queue. It’s too damn noisy in this joint for a conversation so neither of us attempts one, but we don’t need words for what we’re communicating. The way Scarlett keeps looking at me with those sexy fucking eyes of hers and the way her hip keeps swaying into me tells me everything I need to know about where this evening is now headed.
“You want your usual?” she asks me when the bartender reaches us.
“I’ll get the drinks,” I say.
She rolls her eyes, but her smile never leaves her face. Before I can order the drinks, she turns to the bartender and orders the beer I drink, a Manhattan, and a glass of water.
I bring my mouth to her ear. “I like that you know what I drink. I don’t like that you didn’t let me buy the drinks.”
She turns her face to mine. “And I like a man with big dick energy. The kind you have. Don’t ruin that now by needing to get your money out.”
The twitch of my lips is my only response as I allow her to buy me a drink. When she gets to know me, she’ll know that my preference to pay has nothing to do with how big my dick is and everything to do with the way I was raised to treat a woman.
We take our drinks and find a couch. Thankfully, it’s in a corner of the club that’s a little quieter than where we’ve just been. Quiet enough for us to have a conversation.
Scarlett pulls her phone out as I fit my body into the tiny space the couch affords. Whoever made this couch needs a fucking medal. I appreciate the hell out of the fact we’re forced so close together.
Her fingers busy themselves with tapping out a text. I’m always amazed at how fast she can do that shit. I’m a one-finger texter and get irritated when I have to send any message longer than a few words.
When she’s finished, she drops her phone onto her lap and smiles as she crosses her legs and angles herself sideways to look at me. “I was just letting Paul know where we are.”
I extend my arm along the top of the couch. “So he can impede me again?”
Her smile grows. “You say that like he does it on purpose.”
“I think we both know the only thing any of the people around us do on purpose is try to get us the fuck together, my brother included.”
Scarlett brings her glass to her mouth and sips like she’s stalling, so I fill the silence, not wanting her to shut down on me like she always does. “I’ve never seen you dance. You looked good out there.”
I watched her dance for a good ten minutes before she came off the dance floor. She’s a natural, and if I didn’t know her, I’d have assumed she does it regularly. Hell, maybe she does, and I just don’t know.
“I haven’t danced in eight years, but it used to be one of my favourite things to do.”
“Why’d you stop?”
“The reason we all stop doing the fun things we used to do. I grew up.”
“People still dance when they grow up.”
She takes another long sip of her drink. “Do you dance?”
“Only when I’ve got a beautiful woman to dance with.”
“Are you any good at it?”
I lay a sexy grin on her. “You’ll have to be the judge of that.”
She licks her lips. “Who knew you could be so flirty and hot?”
“Who knew you could be so fuckin’ sweet when you wanted to be?”
She laughs, and the sound works its way so deeply and so fucking sweetly inside me that I know I’ll do whatever it takes for another hit. “Also, who knew I wouldn’t want to punch you for saying that?”
I run a finger down her arm. “How are you?”
She knows exactly what I’m asking, and the look in her eyes conveys how much she likes that I asked. “I’m okay, but it was hard. One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.”
Scarlett had the day off work today so she could take Bailey to the clinic where he’s staying for rehab. That was first thing this morning and she’s been on my mind all day.
“You didn’t reply to my text,” I say. The text in which I asked her how it went.
“I had squad time to deal with.”
“Squad time?”
“Yeah, I spent the day with Harlow and the girls at Roxie’s. Haircuts and makeovers and gossip. You know that fun stuff girls do.”
She makes a hand motion like she’s putting a gun to her head and I know she’s deflecting. I’m done with letting her off the hook, though. I’ve given her some space this week to figure out what she wants. I let the flirting between us stay lowkey while she did that. Now I’m ready to know where she stands.
“It takes a couple of minutes at most to reply to a text, Scarlett.”
Her eyes hold mine silently for a long moment before she nods. “Your text made me think about him and I didn’t want to think about him after I left the clinic. I should have replied, but I couldn’t.”
I drink some of my beer. “Sounds like squad time was just what you needed.”
“Highly unlikely. Seriously, you should go one Friday. I’ll give you the day off for it. It’s sure to be the best day of your week.”
I chuckle. “That’s a hard pass from me.”
“I thought so.”
“When can you visit Bailey?”
“He doesn’t want me to visit him much. We agreed once a weekend only. But not this weekend.”
“You guys had a fight over that?”
“Yeah. But what don’t we fight over?”
I know she’s exhausted by all of this, mentally more so than physically. I hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes. “How are you feeling about it all?”
“You realise you’re killing the mood, right?”
&nbs
p; “You realise I don’t care, right?”
She looks like she wants to throw me one of her famous glares while also wanting to lock lips with me. I might want her lips just as much, but more than that, I want to hear how she is.
“How about you take me home and we finish this discussion there?”
I’m almost certain she’s attempting to distract me from this discussion, but it’d be a hell of a lot easier to have a conversation at her place where I can hear her better, so I agree.
“I’ll go find Paul and tell him we’re leaving,” she says. “Wait here.”
I let her go, tracking her ass every step of the way.
This could be a really fucking bad decision, but I hear Harlow’s voice in my head and recall the conversation we had about my bad choices. I also recall what she said about Scarlett and me sparking, and I know she’s right. I fucking feel that right down to my bones and know that I can’t ignore the flames any longer.
13
Scarlett
When I suggested to Wilder that we finish our discussion at my place, I was mostly trying to not finish the discussion. We had a sexy vibe going, and I imagined getting him back to my place and finally resting my eyes on those muscles of his he’s been hiding from me. What I didn’t take into account is his damn tenacity when he’s got a goal in mind. Unfortunately for me, his goal tonight doesn’t seem to match mine. His goal seems to be to force me into sharing my feelings with him.
If there’s one thing Wilder should know about me by now, it’s that I am not the kind of girl who wants to ever share her feelings.
We left the club after I told Paul I was going home with his brother (spoiler alert: his excitement was at a DEFCON 1 level), and I clung to Wilder on the back of his bike to my place. It was the first time I’ve been on a motorcycle. To say the experience got me worked up is more than an understatement. It was the throaty growl of his bike. Our bodies pressed hard against each other. My arms wrapped around him. My legs squeezing on tight.
Seriously, it might have been that last one the most.
I want my legs to squeeze on tight all night long and I’m all about letting him know that.
Well, I was until I let him into my flat and he walked straight into the kitchen.
I took a moment and figured maybe he had plans to do me on my kitchen counter, so I followed him in here.
Turns out he has no such plans.
He. Wants. To. Talk.
What man in the history of men wants to talk when a girl throws herself at them? None that I’ve ever met. Of course the one man alive who wants to do that would find his way to my door.
“You want tea?” he says as I dump my bag on the counter.
“No, I don’t want tea.”
He doesn’t miss my snappy tone and gives me a look that says “maybe try that again.”
I move towards him. “I’m wearing a dress. My hair is up all sexy. And Velvet gave me smoky eyes.” I place a hand to his chest and run it over his pec. “I don’t want tea, and if you do, I’m not sure what’s wrong with you.”
His lips quirk, amused. “I’m more than fuckin’ aware of your dress and your hair and your eyes.”
“So what’s the problem here?”
He removes my hand from his chest. I instantly miss it but manage to keep that thought to myself. Wilder doesn’t need to know just how much he affects me. “There’s no problem, Scarlett. I just want to take a moment to check in on you.”
“I don’t need checking in on.”
“Yeah, you do. Everyone does.”
“Well, consider me checked in on. You already asked about my day and I already told you I’m okay.”
“I know, but then you told me you guys fought and that he doesn’t want you to visit him much, and I thought you might wanna talk some more about that.”
“Remind me what country town you came from again so I can tell all the girls I ever meet in girl squad where to go looking for men who like talking.” I know some girls wish their guy would talk more; I’m not one of those girls. I like that he remembered about Bailey’s admission today, like a lot a lot, but we don’t need to keep discussing it.
“Smartass,” he mutters with another quirk of his lips, and we stare at each other in silence while the mood shifts back to that sexy vibe we had going at the club.
“You wanna dance with me?” I say, instantly wondering where the hell those words came from because they weren’t anywhere near my tongue a second ago.
“I wanna do a lot of things with you.”
We should skip dancing and go straight to those things.
That’s what I think, but my mouth always has a mind of its own.
“I wanna know if you’ve got moves.”
The green in his eyes shimmers itself into a whole new colour of green. A colour that short-circuits my thoughts so completely that I suddenly don’t know up from down or left from right. And when he moves into me, sliding his arm around my waist, I completely forget my name, date of birth, and preference for high walls around my heart.
“I’ve got moves,” he murmurs against my ear. “I’ve got every damn thing you could ever want, Scar.”
Scar.
He’s never called me that before.
And as far as I’m concerned, he should never call me anything but that again.
“You should show me.”
I feel his smile against my cheek before I see it. “The list of things you want me to show you is growing.”
“And guess what?”
“What?” His hand glides down and settles on my ass.
I loop my hands around his neck. “You can show me all three tonight.”
“We’re gonna need music for this.”
“I’ve got us covered.” I sway my hips and move us so I can reach in my bag for my phone. Wilder moves with me in a way that makes me think he just might have those moves he’s led me to believe he has.
“Are we going country for this?” he asks as I pull up Spotify on my phone. The playful tone in his voice tells me he already knows my answer.
“I hate to break it to you, but there isn’t any country that could get me in the mood.”
“You’ve been looking in all the wrong places.”
I pull up my playlist that will get me in the mood before meeting Wilder’s gaze. “You ready to show me what you got?”
His eyes shimmer with more of that sexy green colour that’s threatening to be my ruin. Reaching for my phone, he taps Play on the song at the top of my playlist before tightening his arm around me and curving his other hand loosely around my neck. “I’m way past ready.”
My tiny kitchen fills with the sound of a deep bass drum and the “get up, wake up” lyrics that never fail to hit me in all the right ways.
Marvin Gaye’s voice fills the room as Wilder watches me with a new level of heat, his appreciation of my song choice clear in his eyes. “Sexual Healing” is a great fucking choice, after all. If he can’t get his moves on to this song, we don’t need to take this any further.
Keeping his hand loosely around my neck, he strokes his thumb over my throat as he moves his hips with mine. He has no way of knowing how much I like a man’s hand around my neck.
And that thumb of his?
Goddamn, I’m into it.
Also, his eyes should never leave mine if they’re looking at me the way he is.
I slide my hands down from his neck to his chest to his hips. Slowly, so I can take my time with his muscles. Slowly, in a way that’s new to me with a man. A fact I don’t let myself trip over right now. Tonight isn’t for thinking this through. Tonight is for giving in to what we both want.
When my hands settle on his hips, Wilder rasps, “Fuck,” and presses himself harder against me as his hips continue to sway with mine.
The hand he has on my ass splays, his fingers digging in like he can’t get enough, and he drops his other hand from my neck to take hold of my hip.
I’m a muddled fucking mess of h
eat and need and the kind of wet panties that are all the proof I need that Wilder should take this much further than one song.
I know he’s feeling this in the same way I am from his erection pressing into me. That only turns me on more than I already am.
We make it through “Sexual Healing” without a word besides the “fuck” Wilder dropped. When the song finishes, my playlist shuffles and “Nobody” by Keith Sweat comes on. Another good choice for tonight with its slow, sensual beat.
Wilder drops his mouth to my ear. “I like dancing with you.”
I like the gravel in his voice.
“You should keep talking.”
He grinds his erection against me and grips me harder. “That’s a first for you. Usually you’re telling me to shut up.”
“Dirty talk, Wilder. That’s what I’m looking for here.”
Seriously though, it doesn’t matter what words come out of his mouth right now so long as he keeps that gravel coming right along with them.
“You know what I really like about you, Scarlett?”
“What?”
“That sass you always deliver.”
“Really? I thought it drove you crazy.”
“It does, and yet I fuckin’ like it too.” He brings his mouth to my ear again, something that’s really driving me crazy. Like, I want to tape his mouth to my ear and demand he just keep talking. “Tell me something you like about me,” he demands, all husky and shit.
“Something I like and also find annoying?”
“Sure.”
“Your muscles and your ink and your goddamn eyes.” His smile and the way it meets his eyes sends white-hot desire all through me. “But mostly, your patience and your thoughtfulness. And if you ever repeat any of this, I’ll deny it all.”
My words steal the smile from his face at the same time his phone vibrates on my kitchen counter with a call he ignores. The expression that straightens itself across his face can only be described as an invitation for me to take anything I want from him tonight.
My heart beats faster than it ever has.
This is Wilder.
My boss.
I never imagined wanting to claw at him the way I want to.