Sweet Sinful Nights

by Lauren Blakely

  Shit. This was not how he’d wanted to spend time with her. It was so fucking formal. So immensely fake. So not them.

  “It is,” he said, but he didn’t know how to steer the conversation out of this pothole.

  “How did you decide to switch to a whole new business?” she asked, and she sounded curious, so naturally interested that he was about to give her the full truth. The answer was he hadn’t wanted to wear out his welcome with comedy. He wanted to walk away when he was on top. So he had.

  But he sensed that could be read wrong. Like, as a character assassination of how he’d left her since it might show he had a pattern of walking away. There was another reason too – it showed the work he gave her up for was no longer the center of his world.

  “I was ready for a new challenge. I still moonlight, though. I do standup once or twice a month at some local clubs,” he said.

  “How interesting,” she said, but she didn’t sound enthused. “And does that satisfy your comedic thirst?”

  “Yes. That’s where I did the King Schmuck bit. I don’t know if you saw that one online,” he said, because it was better to get that out in the open.

  “Hmm.” She looked up at the ceiling as if she were trying to recall, then shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell. I must have missed it. But I’ve been pretty busy, too, and I don’t spend much time on the Internet.”

  Soon, the waitress returned with their drinks, and Shannon raised her glass in a toast. “To business.”

  “To reunions.”

  He knocked back half his drink, letting the burn fuel him.

  Screw this small talk. He didn’t want to be polite with her. He wanted to know her. To understand why she’d never picked up the phone when he called in those first few weeks, why she’d been so hard to find, and why she’d changed her name. He scooted closer. “Shan, what’s going on? How is your family? How is your grandmother? Your grandfather? Are you really okay?”

  She closed her eyes briefly, her fingers clutching her martini glass. When she opened them that hard veneer was gone, and she was the girl he’d spent his nights with in college, the one who’d relied on him for everything. “They’re great. They’ve always been great,” she whispered. She waved a hand in front of her face, as if it were a magic wand, erasing all her woes. “Enough about me. Tell me something happy. Your family was always the happy one. Mom and dad together, they actually liked each other, and still do, I presume. How’s your brother?”

  He caught her up to speed with Clay, who’d been married for a few years, and had a baby daughter now.

  “I can’t believe you’re an uncle,” Shannon said, shaking her head in wonder. It was crazy how she’d softened as soon as he addressed the issue of her family, the one thing she didn’t like to discuss. Except, she always had talked about them with him. Maybe all this time she’d been looking for someone to talk to, and he’d filled that gap.

  “My niece is adorable.” He took out his phone, clicked open his galleries, and showed Shannon a photo of Carly Nichols, Clay and Julia’s little girl.

  Shannon moved even closer, and a wide smile spread across her face. “She’s so cute.”

  “She really is. Here are the three of them.”

  “She’s beautiful, your brother’s wife.”

  “They’re kind of insanely perfect for each other. They even have the world’s coolest dog. Here’s Ace.” He flipped to another picture and pointed to the Border Collie mix they’d adopted a few years ago.

  “My brother Ryan has a dog like that. Named him Johnny Cash. Because he’s mostly black. The Man in Black and all.”

  “Great name.”

  “Ryan treats him like a king. I think he even cooks him steak on Sundays.”

  “Lucky dog,” Brent said with a smile.

  “Have you been back in Vegas for long?” she asked, as she ran her fingertip absently along the rim of her martini glass.

  “A little over a year. I moved here for stand-up after Late Night Antics, then back to L.A. again for a few years when I got my own show, then I returned again last year to start the clubs,” he said, tilting his head back and forth. His life post-college had swung like a pendulum between the two cities. “I live over near downtown. Want to see?” he asked, gesturing to the window.

  “Yes.”

  He stood up and held out a hand. Not that he expected her to take it, and she didn’t, but he placed his palm softly, ever so softly, against the small of her back. He barely touched her; there was a millimeter of space between them, but her breath caught, and she trembled slightly before straightening her spine.

  They stood by the glass, him behind her. All of Vegas shimmered below, the lights of the city like fireflies, the skyscrapers rising up through the night, as neon streaked to the horizon. He pointed north, past the lights of the Stratosphere. “That’s me over there.”

  “I love that neighborhood.” She gestured beyond, and he was turned on simply by the way she raised her arm. Damn, he was easy. Anything she did, any move she made, bordered on sexual for him. She could have a baggy sweatshirt on and he’d still be ready to go. “And that’s me,” she said.

  She was so damn near to him as they stood gazing out the window into the brightly lit night. His entire body buzzed like an exposed electrical line because of this woman—flesh and blood, curves and muscle, strength and beauty—mere inches from him.

  “That’s nice,” he said, his voice raspy and hot, but there was nothing nice at all about this moment.

  She turned to look at him, and neither one of them said a word. Her green eyes were dark and intense. Her lips were so close. The inches between them were swallowed whole by the connection that crackled between them. She seemed to sway closer, and he moved in, seizing the moment.

  He lifted his hand to her hair, still sleek in its twist, different from the shade she’d had when he knew her, but beautiful just the same. A strand had fallen loose, chestnut brown and curled. He touched it, ran his finger across the single lock. Time melted away as he leaned into the familiar crook of her neck. The craving for her ran so damn deep it lived inside his bones.

  He inhaled her, that honey scent, a new smell that in an instant marked her.

  “Shan,” he whispered, rough and gravelly, filled with so much want for her, which had built over the years, grown higher, spread further, formed roots. Inhabited him. He was desperate to have her in his arms again, to smother her in kisses that erased all the years.

  “Brent,” she whispered, his name sounding like sugar on her tongue.

  He buried his face in her neck, layering kisses on her soft skin. “Where have you been?” he asked, though it was entirely rhetorical. She hadn’t been with him. He hadn’t been with her. That was the answer.

  “Where were you?” she countered softly.

  He lifted his face and looked her in the eyes as he brushed the back of his fingers along her cheek. “Thinking of you,” he said.

  He didn’t know how he’d gone from breaking two glasses to finding her falling into his arms. But that was where they were. He cupped her cheeks in his hands. “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he rasped out, and then he crushed her mouth. He consumed her lips. He kissed her hard, and greedily, and the world around him turned black and small. It faded into a speck of nothingness because there was room for nothing else in his world but her. Nothing but the utter perfection of Shannon Paige-Prince wrapped around him where she belonged.

  No time had passed.

  No years had flown by.

  No regrets had dug deep inside him.

  They kissed like it was a first time, and a last time, and like it was all time. They kissed like two people who wanted to climb into each other’s skin, to smash into the other person. There were no doubts. No questions. She had to feel everything he felt. She had to want a second chance, too.

  This was not only a kiss. It was crashing back into orbit. It was gravity reinstated. In the press of her lips, in the slide of her tongue, in the g
asps she made, they hurtled back in time. All mistakes were erased in this moment.

  He dropped a hand to her lower back, yanking her close. Kissing was not enough. Lips would only get them so far. He had to feel her, touch her, taste her. She was his, and even though they were kissing in front of the entire city, he was all alone with her.

  He couldn’t get close enough to her. She pressed into him, a full body collision, grinding against him. He groaned as he reclaimed her mouth, his entire body consumed with a lust so powerful he didn’t know how he’d make it out of the bar and back to his house, to a room, to her place, wherever, anywhere, without fucking her along the way.

  As she rubbed her body against him, he could feel the heat between her legs. It fried his brain and short-circuited his skull. The desire to touch her enveloped him. He wanted to watch her undress, to stare at that to-die-for body that he’d missed so terribly, to roam his eyes over her curves as she lowered herself onto him and rode him the way she liked.

  Hell, the way she fused her body against his told him all he needed to know. She wanted the same things.

  He kissed a line along her jaw to her ear as she breathed hard. “Come home with me tonight,” he said, skimming his hand along the outside of her thigh.

  Her hand connected with his cheek, and his head snapped to the side.

  His head rang. His skin burned from the sharpness—the unexpected sting from the slap that came out of nowhere.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” she asked, pulling away.

  “What the fuck is wrong with me?” he repeated, shock reverberating in his bones. He opened his mouth to say more, but no words came.

  She leaned in close and whispered, “Let me give you a tip, Brent. When you haven’t seen a woman in ten years, maybe say you’re sorry for breaking her heart before you try to fuck her again.”

  Frustration seared his nervous system. “Fuck,” he said in a low hiss. “I’m sorry, Shan.”

  She narrowed her eyes and shot him an icy stare. “That would have been a lot more believable if it didn’t require a prompt.”

  Without skipping a beat, he gave it right back to her, firing off a retort. “How was I supposed to say it when your mouth was on mine? Tell me that, Shan. Tell me that,” he said, jutting out his chin, waiting for her answer.

  She grabbed her silver scarf from the chair and glared at him as she brandished it. “Next time you want to see me you’ll need a better excuse than sitting on my scarf.”

  She stormed off, but when she was a few feet away, he called out, “It’s called a wrap. Don’t forget that. It’s a wrap.”

  She stopped in her tracks. He swore red clouds billowed off her, and as she clenched her fists, he was willing to bet she was fighting every urge to give him the finger.

  She resumed her pace.

  As he watched her walk away, this time he was pissed off too. The woman wouldn’t cut him a fucking break. She’d avoided his phone calls those first few days. She’d ignored every attempt he’d made to contact her. And now, she was kissing him back, then getting pissed at him for wanting her.

  What the hell?

  He used to think he understood her. He used to think he was the only one for her.

  But she gave new meaning to the word whiplash.

  CHAPTER SIX

  She was one of two women in the gym, and the only one wearing heels.

  “You can’t behave that way.”

  The directive came from her brother Michael, who was in the middle of a workout.

  He hoisted the barbell high above his chest with a measured exhale. A few feet over, a beefy guy in a muscle tank grunted as he raised his weights then dropped them in a loud clang on the floor. With pinpoint precision, Michael lowered the bar to his chest, inch by inch, then pushed up again. “You need to keep that temper of yours in check,” he continued in a controlled breath.

  “I know,” Shannon said in a tiny voice, her head lowered, her hair falling in a curtain around her face. She’d unclipped her French twist on the drive home, gunning the gas and blasting pop music to drown out her thoughts as she sped along the highway, putting distance between Brent and herself.

  But really, the space she needed was between her own untamed anger and the person she wanted to be. A person who should be in control of her emotions, of her feelings, and of her matchstick temper. She wasn’t in control, so as soon as she’d pulled off the highway near her home, she’d spotted the sign for the gym where Michael went and turned in.

  Ever disciplined, Michael was exactly where he usually was at ten-thirty at night—lifting weights, after having logged an hour on the cardio machine. Michael owned a security conglomerate and ran it with their brother Ryan. Michael arrived at the office at eight every morning after his five-mile run¸ worked a full day, then headed to the gym nearly every night for a second workout. Call him a workaholic. Call him an athlete. Call him a machine. He was all of that, and he was also the moral compass of their foursome.

  The eldest of the siblings, he’d been their rock, and their leader.

  He lowered the weight once more, then raised it for a final rep before placing it on the rack of the bench press. Sitting up, he draped a strong arm around her.

  She crinkled her nose. “Eww,” she said, pushing his sweaty arm away from her dress.

  He grabbed her head and rubbed his knuckles against her skull, his light blue eyes twinkling. When he stopped laughing, he tugged her close. “So what are you going to do tomorrow?”

  He was like a teacher, reinforcing the lesson.

  “Apologize,” she grumbled.

  He punched her arm lightly. “C’mon. Say it with spirit.”

  She affixed a too-bright smile. “Apologize,” she said with forced pep. “Even though he’s the one who should be apologizing.”

  Michael nodded, his eyes darkening momentarily. He was no fan of Brent. “You’ll get no disagreement from me on that point, but this isn’t about him. It’s about you.” He pointed at her as he spoke in that gentle but authoritative tone he had. His older brother tone. “Who you want to be. How you want to behave.”

  “And who I don’t want to become,” she muttered.

  He shot her a small smile. “I’m not worried about that in the least. But you can’t give in to anger. Though, trust me, I’d like to with that fucker,” he said. Michael had helped Brent with his proposal. He’d asked their grandmother for her wedding band to be used in the engagement ring.

  “He’s not that bad,” she said, and that was the understatement of the night. Brent wasn’t that bad. He was that good. Kissing him was like melting from head to toe, like being dipped in pleasure and coated in a fine dust of hot shivery tingles. He ignited her completely, lust and desire sweeping up and down her skin from his touch.

  Not that she’d say any of that to her brother. Maybe to her girlfriend Ally, but Michael didn’t need to know that Brent Nichols still turned her on like no man ever had. Besides, the purpose of the night’s pit stop wasn’t to conduct a post-mortem on being kissed unexpectedly above the Vegas skyline. It was because her brother always knew what to do and how to handle sticky situations, like her having hit a man.

  She cringed remembering what she’d done.

  But she reminded herself that she and her brothers had risen above their roots. They’d refashioned themselves into upstanding citizens, business owners—successful adults. As the Paige-Prince kids they’d grown up lower class and hadn’t known anything beyond the outskirts of their dangerous Vegas neighborhood. Now they were better than that. They were the restrained, sophisticated, and successful Sloans.

  “Call me tomorrow,” he said, pinning her with wide blue eyes until she nodded.

  “I will report back,” she said with a crisp salute, then hugged him goodbye, feeling more centered and calm than when she’d pulled into the gym.

  But as she drove the final blocks home, that feeling vanished and a deep shame washed over her. She couldn’t believe she’d slapped Br
ent. What was wrong with her?

  She parked and walked into her condo, then slammed the door hard behind her. The loud crash it made in the doorframe was mildly satisfying in the way that throwing a hairbrush or chucking a phone at the wall after a frustrating conversation could be. That was what she should have done instead of slapping him.

  A picture frame on her kitchen counter had rattled and fallen over when she shut the door. She picked it up and repositioned it. An image of sunflowers. She brushed it lightly with her fingertips, then slumped into a chair at her kitchen table and untied the crisscross straps from her heels, heaving a sigh as she tossed one red suede shoe across the cool tiled floor, then the other. A heel smacked into the wall, thumping along the wood.

  She muttered a curse. She didn’t need to maul a good pair of shoes because she was pissed at herself. She rose, padded to the wall and picked it up, inspecting the heel to make sure no damage was done.

  Safe and sound.

  Unlike her heart.

  Unlike her ego.

  Unlike her stupid brain that was tricking her

  She and Brent had gone from zero to sixty in mere seconds, it seemed. One minute he’d been holding her in the hallway asking if she was safe. The next she was grinding against him by the window. She was ready, so damn ready to have gone home with him, to have tossed out the past, ignored the hurt, and just let him take her. He was her good drug—when they were younger, one hit and he’d washed away all the anger and shame.

  She’d been practically addicted to sex with him when they were together. Brent had been the only thing that had felt good after far too long spent feeling nothing but bad. Nothing but the black mark of her family that trailed behind her all through her teenage years. Nothing but being the Paige-Prince kids.

  Before him, she’d only had dance and her brothers. Then he came into her life, and she had something pure and unsullied by the cold, cruel world. Brent was her sweet, sinful addiction, and she rationalized that it was much healthier to need him than the bottle or a needle. But it wasn’t just the sex that had burned brightly between them. It was everything. He’d made her laugh, he’d made her smile, and he’d brought her so much happiness. She’d hadn’t been close to anyone like him since. While she hadn’t turned into a nun when they’d split, she hadn’t been busy fornicating during the last ten years, either. Her list of lovers was remarkably short—no one had compared to him because no one could compare to him.