by Casey Hagen
“Oh, I just wanted to let you know this is my last one. I’m ready for my check. Please.”
“Of course, I’ll be right back,” he said.
“Just add her bill to my tab,” a deep, cool voice said from beside her.
She turned to an olive-skinned, dark-eyed man with a strong jaw and sensuous lips leaning against the bar next to her. His neat black hair was styled to perfection, as if he had just gotten ready for the workday instead of being at the end. His mouth twitched with an arrogant smile as she looked him over. Thick, neat eyebrows hung low over sultry dark eyes. His lips, God, his lips. Had she ever kissed a mouth like his with plump, yet masculine lips that looked like they knew just how to make a woman beg?
The men she had kissed, they’d shown interest. Polite interest. Boring, cookie-cutter kisses had ruled her past ten years. There’d be nothing cookie-cutter about the way this stranger’s lips would coax, control, and command. They’d entrap her with their sensual promise. She’d bet her life on it.
All it had taken was one look from him, and years of breeding and lessons in posture fled as she swayed toward him.
Impossible to blame the wine, since she was only on her second glass.
His suit had clearly been tailored to fit his broad chest, as if fabric and flesh were one. She’d guess from the looks of the material and the cut that he had spent thousands on it, tens of thousands. This was no Armani suit. It was beyond, and it was a clear message. Wealth and power oozed from him with his impeccable neatness and confidence, but not the kind of wealth and power she’d been raised around.
The stranger was dark, dangerous, and absolutely forbidden in her world of old families and old unions. His tanned hand lay over his forearm as he leaned against the counter, letting her look her fill.
This was the kind of guy who could deliver the passion that she had overheard the woman in Saks gushing about. Now that the possibility stood here before her, the words she committed in ink seemed all the more dangerous. She curled the napkin into a tighter ball.
“Thank you, but I can pay my own bill,” she said.
He nodded, and pursed his sensuous lips. “I have no doubt. If you couldn’t, you wouldn’t even know about this place.”
“Touché,” she said with a polite smile and the raising of her chin.
“What’s your name?” he asked, his deep voice sending shivers over her exposed skin.
She glanced down at the napkin and back up at him. “Beatrice.” Her voice dropped to a murmur. She hated her old-fashioned name. Beatrices didn’t get asked to school dances, they weren’t asked on dates, they didn’t make prom queen, and they didn’t spend passionate nights with dark strangers.
Beatrices were polite and loyal. Peacemakers. Their parents arranged for them to have prom dates, matching them with sons of the most advantageous families for that particular time. Beatrices were bargaining chips in a delicate dance between the elite rich.
And when your parents were particularly good at making it all seem normal, it took a stranger whispering about dark desires and fulfilled yearnings to make you realize that you had ever missed anything.
“Beatrice,” he said, the name tumbling over his tongue and rolling out on the wave of his deep timbre. “I like it.”
Her slim hand went to her throat, her thumb and index finger fluttering over the soft skin there. “You do?”
He narrowed his eyes and smiled, revealing straight teeth and dimples on either side of his face. “Yes. Don’t you?”
She broke eye contact and took a sip of her wine. She gripped the stem of the glass as though it were a lifeline, keeping her from sinking into the quicksand of his enticing stare.
“It reminds me of virginal maidens wearing chastity belts,” she murmured without meeting his eyes.
“Yes, well, I’m not sure virginal maidens show this much leg,” he said with a downward glance.
He gestured to her thigh and she held her breath. Waiting. Hoping he would touch her. Only he didn’t. What the hell was wrong with her?
“This dress was a moment of pure insanity,” she said with a gentle roll of her eyes.
“This dress displayed on your curves is a goddamned work of art.”
She sucked in a breath and met his eyes.
“My assessment surprises you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she sputtered. “But then, for how much it cost, the dress should be phenomenal.”
He leaned into her, but didn’t touch. His head tilted toward hers, creating an intimate bubble. In that moment the rest of the patrons disappeared, and it was just the two of them. “It’s not just the dress, Beatrice. Something tells me if I were to drag that zipper down your delicate spine and let your dress pool at your pretty feet, that everything revealed beneath would banish the dress from my mind with its glory.”
Her heart raced with the intimate words. Words no man had dared utter to her, even when lying together, naked and entwined. She’d only experienced polite sex, with little intimacy. The few men she’d shared her body with put in the required amount of time holding her so as not to seem rude, but the minute that time was up they disentangled themselves from her embrace—the experience discarded as if it had been no more than a household chore. Routine. Forgettable.
She had been content with that. Call her naïve, but she didn’t know there was anything else. She had been taught that the lack of personal connection was to be expected in her world. The fewer feelings involved, the less you risked if relationships fell apart. Barriers were the difference between public explosions leaving reputations in tatters and scorching those who got too close and the uneventful fizzling out, like a car running out of gas, sputtering to a stop on a back country road.
The problem with fizzling out is you never felt the flames. She wanted heat. Infatuation. She craved danger. She sought the kind of touch that would mark her forever.
She wanted an experience that tattooed itself on her psyche for the rest of her days.
“Cat got your tongue, Beatrice?” he murmured.
She gulped. “I have no idea what to say to that.”
His fingers danced over the bar and brushed the edge of her hand. “Fair enough. So, why don’t we start with what brought you here tonight.”
“I needed a change,” she whispered as she watched his finger feather over the skin on the back of her hand. She expected softness. The hands of a businessman whose money worked for him, not one who worked for his money. Instead, the rough pad of his finger scraped along, sending bolts of liquid lust flashing through her system.
If she hadn’t overheard that women at Saks she’d swear she needed medical attention, but no…this was the elemental attraction and burning need she had heard the woman whisper about.
And Beatrice’s body reacted.
Her skin felt too tight over her muscles, making her fight the urge to squirm. Her nipples tightened to hard nubs that grazed the lining of her dress. The urge to nonchalantly brush her wrist against the sensitized peak right there at the bar, with people on all sides, shocked her.
She swallowed against her suddenly dry throat.
“This change…you want to tell me more about it?” He tilted his head, capturing her gaze. “Whatever it is, I’m intrigued. Just the thought of it is making your body hum.” He pulled his bottom lip into his mouth and bit down as his gaze traveled down her neck and lower.
“It’s the thought of you—” She slapped a hand over her mouth to hold in the words. Maybe the wine had more of an effect than she thought.
His eyes turned dark, and narrowed. He lay his palm over her fist. “The thought of me is making your body hum?” His voice caressed her ears, low, grating, and full of wondrous power over her senses.
She closed her eyes and turned her head, mortified.
He cupped her chin and brought her face right back to him. “Don’t hide. Tell me, Beatrice. Is it your attraction to me that’s making your body react?”
“React?” she said.
She kept her eyes closed, and nodded.
“I said, don’t hide.”
His hard words snapped her eyes open in a bit of temper. “You’re not my boss,” she said, with authority mustered up from years of privilege.
His thumb fanned over her knuckles. “No, but if you’re going to be my lover tonight, you’ll tell the truth.”
Despite his pompous assumptions, her stomach fluttered with excitement and arousal. “Excuse me? That’s awfully presumptuous, don’t you think? Besides, I don’t sleep with random strangers.”
She didn’t know if she was making a stand or trying to convince herself because, no, she had never slept with a random stranger, but in this moment she wanted to. She wanted to more than she cared about her safety, and that worried her.
“With you naked in my bed, the last thing I plan to do is sleep.”
“I don’t even know your name.”
“Micah.” He held out his hand to her.
It was the same hand that he had just lifted from her fist and, despite his gentleness thus far, she looked at it like a snake waiting to strike. Still, in a matter of seconds, deep-seated breeding insisted that she take it.
His warm hand curled around hers and that woman inside of her, the one dying to get out, stood to attention and demanded to be in control. If only she didn’t need her desires voiced through Beatrice.
“Somehow, that’s not better,” Beatrice said.
He straightened and brought her hand up to his lips, gliding them over her skin while holding her stare. “You can speak to the owner or any of the staff here and they can vouch for me. I’m a businessman. A successful one. There’s no advantage in my harming a woman and, even if there was, where I come from women are sacred.”
Men in her world didn’t make declarations like that. Nor did they show it through their actions. Women were accessories, show-pieces, built-in event planners in men’s lives. They were given virtually everything they wanted under the guise of being cherished, when really it was a way of holding them in their place behind and a little to the left. The women who kept their lives running smoothly, dealing with the mundane tasks, working behind the scenes to make their men successful. And women fell for it.
Beatrice fell for it.
The next sixty years loomed before her, each day like the one before. The sadness of it had her opening her fist and handing the napkin to Micah without a word.
“You’re sure?” he asked, gesturing to the napkin.
She bit the inside of her cheek but didn’t close her eyes, not this time, and nodded.
He smoothed the napkin on the bar and held it up before him. She watched his eyes trace over her words. She grabbed her wine and finished it off, needing the rush of the alcohol. All of a sudden she wished she hadn’t told the bartender she was done for the night.
“Well, well, well…a wish list of sorts. Or maybe a dirty bucket list is more accurate. Why did you sign it ‘Natasha’?” He slid the list into his breast pocket.
“Because a Beatrice doesn’t do those things.”
He dragged a knuckle down her cheek. “What I’m wondering is what made Beatrice want these things.”
She trembled at his touch. “Beatrice only just found out that people actually do those things.”
His hand froze, and then fell away. “You’re serious?”
She clasped the diamond dangling from her neck. “Yes.”
“Wow,” he said.
She couldn’t read his expression, and that’s probably just what he intended.
“And now I feel stupid,” she said.
“For being a flesh and blood woman who wants to be satisfied? Don’t. Isn’t that what brought you here tonight?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“And now?”
“I’m scared.”
He slid a hand into his pocket and frowned. “Of me?”
“No. Of me.”
His avid gaze roamed over her skin, burning a trail along her flesh. He held his hand out, palm up. “Will you come with me?”
She surveyed the room filled with beautiful, smiling people drinking and flirting. People who knew what they wanted and took it. They all looked like members of some elite club into which she wasn’t invited. Not because they didn’t want her there, but because these people went for what they wanted and they expected those around them to do the same. No hand-holding in this room. She needed to grow up and be the women she hadn’t known she wanted to be.
She swallowed hard and took his hand.
Chapter 3
Micah needed to rethink the plan. Beatrice wasn’t a one and done woman. Oh, she tried hard to convince herself she was. Even going so far as to commit it to ink on a napkin. But he’d guarantee she had a bit of a tender heart, and the minute her skin touched his in that bar the tentacles that bound the physical to the emotional had reached for him and began weaving them together.
He didn’t do emotional. The whole point of contracting with Infidelity in the new year was to avoid that particular complication. Of course, there was the added benefit of always having a woman on his arm, the same woman, one who understood what was in it for her and didn’t entertain any illusions of happily-ever-after.
But there was no way he could walk away from Beatrice. Not with knowing what she was looking for, and would likely find with God knows who.
He’d give her the fantasy she had scrawled onto the napkin.
He’d keep her safe while he did.
And he’d cross his own lines to do so.
He took Beatrice’s hand and guided her off the barstool. With a palm to the small of her back, he walked her out. She moved with grace, her stilettoed heel landing right in front of the toe of the other foot much like a supermodel, but without the aggressiveness. There was no accentuated swing of her hips, just a natural sway that drew a man’s eye and appreciation but didn’t make him jump to the conclusion that she was on the prowl and willing to do anything.
Micah appreciated her class. Class he worked for, but she was likely born with.
They picked up her coat from the hostess, and he held the door for her as she stepped onto the sidewalk.
He contemplated the night ahead and how he would balance his respect for her natural grace while giving her what she desperately wanted. He hadn’t been spinning bullshit when he said that women are sacred. He grew up in a world that taught him quickly that, without women, society fell apart. He had every confidence that a world of just women would flourish; just men, and they would systematically destroy each other and leave nothing unscathed.
He recognized in himself the hunger to succeed, and came with a willingness to destroy those who sought to get in his way. Most men didn’t recognize their hunger, sometimes not even after it destroyed them.
Power-blinded.
The usually busy streets were oddly quiet. Instead of the chorus of horns, random honks split the low hum of the city. He took a deep breath of the fresh air. On this section of the street he could pick up the crisp, clean scent that came with the biting cold. Most of the city had a tinge of garbage, exhaust, and food, often all mixed together.
He welcomed these rare moments of escape from the reminder that he shared Manhattan with over one and a half million other souls.
A blanket of stars draped over the city, and winked above them in the clear night sky. Beatrice tipped her head back and smiled. It was the first time he’d seen her sweet face relax since he’d met her. The firelight show overhead seemed to be just enough to make her forget what was to come.
The scandalous things she wanted to do on the way into the new year.
Something about her in that moment tugged at him, in a place buried so deep in the shadows that he had to clear his throat to speak. “Will you trust me, Beatrice?” He held his hand out to her and waited for her answer to seal their fate.
Whether he gave her this last out to save herself or save him, he didn’t dare guess.
She studied him, searching for something only she understood. Her cheeks flushed from more than just the biting cold. Streetlights reflected in her hazel eyes, setting them aglow. He waited for her to take his hand, giving him permission to transform those eyes from hopeful, shining orbs into lust-filled slivers filled with wonder under her half-lidded gaze.
With a deep breath and a soft smile reserved for Southern ladies enjoying tea on verandas, she lay her palm in his.
His lungs expanded with pride for her bravery. “Come on, then.”
Just twenty feet down from The Sliver, he stopped at the private entrance to his penthouse. “This is it.” He used a key to open a panel with a keypad, and punched in the nine-digit sequence with hardly a glance.
She laughed, the sound laced with a hint of nerves. “That’s a lot of security to get into a condo. It’s like you’re Bruce Wayne or something.”
He let out a gruff chuckle.
She lay her hand on his arm. “You aren’t, are you? I mean, not exactly Bruce Wayne since Batman is just a character, but—well…” She massaged her forehead. “I guess I don’t know what I’m trying to say. The locks are disconcerting.”
He took the hand worrying her forehead, and kissed her knuckles. “I’m a private man. Besides, it’s a penthouse condo. In this building, they each have a private entrance. No cloak and dagger stuff. It just happened to come with the place.”
“And the locks?”
“Those were me. The chances of someone randomly hitting the right sequence of numbers is small, but it’s still not a chance I’m willing to take.” He gestured to the door he held. “After you.”
She sucked in a breath, and practically jumped through the doorway as though, if she didn’t propel herself, she’d lose her nerve. “You must do very well in your business. Penthouses in New York City are pricey.”
He pushed the button at the elevator and the double doors cleanly slid open. “Yes, I do well, and I have every intention of doing even better.”