by Cee Smith
Blaire didn’t know much about one-night stands, but she knew how they’re supposed to go. A night where inhibitions are thrown out, no names, no attachments, and in the morning you both go your separate ways, never to speak again. At least that’s what was supposed to happen.
Mother nature had other plans.
She established boundaries: No details, no more sex. But Joel was never much for following the rules. With a body built for sex and an appetite to match, one night with him would never be enough. Torn between the case that could make her legal career and a man who thinks of clothes as optional, how long could she stick to the rules?
Shut In is intended for mature audiences due to explicit language and mature themes.
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© 2015 Cee Smith
Editing by Erica’s Editing Services
Cover Design © Najla Qamber Designs
Shut In (Just This Once series, Book 1)
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A Note From the Author:
You can also take this as a bit of a warning. This book is a work of fiction. If you’re looking to read what a graphic example of a sand storm would feel like, I’m sure there are some really good nature books that could help you experience that. Also, if you’re one of those doomsday preppers constantly waiting for a reason to bust out all that shit you bought online, Blaire’s lack of preparedness will likely trigger your OCD (don’t say I didn’t warn you).
Chapter One
My legs felt hot bundled beneath the down comforter that seemed a bit too heavy in the Vegas summer. The air conditioner clicked on, clanking loudly like ice cubes dropping into an empty glass, making the skin of my sweat-dampened neck stark cold from the breeze.
I tried working through the dense fog surrounding my thoughts, but I couldn’t think past my parched throat and the way every muscle felt like it’d been stretched beyond its limits. Glimpses of the night before filtered in while I tried swallowing past the saliva that had settled against the back of my throat. I remembered my coworkers, Kerri and Piper, lining up shots as if it were my 21st birthday and they were busting my alcoholic virginity. I guess in a way I was becoming reacquainted with a version of myself long forgotten.
White noise echoed from somewhere within my house, making my mind feel like soft cheese slipping through a cheese grater—it pulled me from my drunken stupor and back to the present. The haziness of my mind forgotten, I stumbled from the bed. Tilting and whirling like a dreidel, I threw out my right arm to brace myself from crashing into the nightstand. Whoa. I drank way too much if I still can’t stand up straight.
I walked a few steps before I took notice of my lack of pajamas. My black, strapless bra and bikini underwear were a blaring contrast against my ivory-colored skin, which damn near looked fluorescent in the blackened room. There are my pants, I thought, as I stepped over the bundle of jeans that were half turned inside out lying just inside the bedroom door. I looked around at my feet and still hadn’t noticed my shirt, but I wasn’t too bothered by it.
The sound from the TV was what pulled me from that room into the living room. It was a long buzzing sound, hypnotic in its attempt to electrify my eardrums. The sound reminded me of a vacuum, and I just wanted to pull the cord from the wall to fall back into my too-warm sheets and thoughts weighted down by one too many shots of tequila. Except when I stood in front of the TV, I could see the Technicolor swirl of rainbow colors and wide bars running across the top and bottom of the screen. It was some kind of emergency broadcast. I looked across the couch hoping to find the remote, but of course it was nowhere to be seen.
Moving to the front of the couch, I dropped down and started shuffling couch cushions, the tweed of the couch abrading my skin in my rummaging. I finally found the remote and made to turn the channel. It took three or four channel changes to notice that each channel was the same—everyone was broadcasting the same message that seemed to be blurring across the screen.
Three beeps preceded the message: This is an emergency announcement. Please do not leave your homes. Las Vegas and surrounding areas are experiencing a dust storm. Researchers are still looking into causes, but they warn it may be days or weeks before it is safe to leave your homes. Visibility is limited to a few feet. We repeat: Stay in your homes.
After the completion of the first warning, I fell into the couch cushions and listened to three more rounds of the same message. Somewhere around the middle of the third time hearing the warning it finally hit me. I jumped up, ignoring the protests of my stomach, and ran to the front window. I pulled hard on the cord, and the blinds shot up, revealing a window of black. Maybe the message was old because it looked like visibility was zero, as the only thing that could be seen was the mirror of my lone form staring into the darkness.
I stood gazing out as if a cloud would part and suddenly I would see Mr. and Mrs. Bigsby’s garden of purple flowers, or Tamara’s dented mailbox from when Jacob accidentally backed the car into it, or my yellowing lawn, deciding that today would be the perfect day to water the grass. Except all I could see was my living room reflected in the glass.
“What’s going on?”
I froze upon hearing an unfamiliar male voice behind me. I could see the bottom of his bare legs reflected in the glass. I discontinued pulling the blinds shut and ignored the tremor running through me at the sound of another person in my home. A home where I live alone.
I felt my breath hitch as I turned to look at the man standing in the archway between my living room and dining room. Clad in only boxer-briefs, he filled up the opening of the space with his wide chest and tall stature. There were only a few inches between the top of his head and the top of the archway, which was easily a foot and a half taller than me. He looked like some Greek statue with his chiseled chest and bulging thighs. His physique could rival an MMA fighter’s, and with that thought, I was suddenly trembling again.
“Who,” I swallowed, my throat once again catching on the bit of saliva that settled against my throat like cement. “Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?” I was impressed that I was able to hold it together long enough to string not one but two full sentences together.
The giant took a few steps toward me before halting mid-step. He raised his hands up, and his foot fell back a step. His short, brown hair looked tousled, but that was the only thing that looked sleepy about him. His eyes were bright like Granny Smith apples, his lips were full, and when he spoke, his mouth spread wide, curving up from his square jaw.
“I know it was good, but I honestly can’t say that I’ve ever fucked a woman so good she got amnesia. I guess there’s a first for everything.” His smile was disarming in that perfectly charming way a man can sometimes look at you and make you want to cream your panties with a flash of gleaming, white
teeth. If I weren’t so nervous by his sudden presence, I would be stunned by his casual arrogance and words that made my ears hot with embarrassment.
“I, uh, we…um…” I didn’t even know what to say. My feet shifted with nerves that urged me to press my hands between my legs to assess the contents of my nether region. My body was aching, but I thought it was the usual pains after a night of hard drinking. Upon second thought, however, the pain seemed to be localized to the inside of my thighs and my stomach muscles.
“Does this mean round two is off the table?” he asked with a smirk. He rubbed down his abs absentmindedly while he spoke, and all I could think about was sitting astride him with that view beneath me. What is wrong with me? This man is a stranger in my home, and all I can think about is the impressive body that’s fully displayed for my viewing pleasure?
I shook those thoughts from my mind and concentrated on the PSA that was still filtering from the screen to his right. He followed the path of my vision, and soon we were both fully engulfed in the message. His body dropped down into the corner of the sectional as if it was just another Saturday morning spent in the comfort of his own home.
“I generally like to know the name of the woman whose taste is still on my tongue the next morning, and seeing as how I’ll be a houseguest for oh, I don’t know, possibly the next few weeks, I’m thinking now would be a good time to ask.”
He didn’t turn to look at me as I groaned behind him. This was going to be a long few weeks, and though rude, I made my way back to my bedroom for a brief reprieve so I could gather my thoughts on what the hell happened the night before.
---The Night Before---
Properly sandwiched between Kerri and Piper, I felt Kerri shift forward. The gleaming wood propped up her already well-endowed bust better than any bra could. My eyes bulged as her cleavage sat atop the bar like an empty glass waiting for the bartender to refill. The ends of her shiny black hair dipped between her low-cut blouse, contrasting with the gold sequins that cascaded down the front of her shirt like a gleaming garland on a Christmas tree.
The bartender finished making a drink before he slid back to our end of the bar.
“Ladies,” the bartender said. His ashy blonde hair clung to his lightly bronzed forehead, making him look like a kid barely old enough to drink, let alone bartend.
“Matthew, I think we need something a little stronger for our girl here.” Kerri giggled like she had just told a joke, and the kid’s smile brightened a little more at having been let in on something that even we couldn’t identify.
“Yeah? Are you having some kind of ladies night out?”
“Yeah,” Kerri said, lifting her hand to cover the right side of her mouth, the side closest to me. “My friend needs to get laid. We’re trying to help her.”
“Kerri, I-I’m not that drunk. We can all hear you,” I added, pulling her hand away from her mouth.
Piper scooted in closer, leaning over the front of me to add her two cents.
I knew if I were a little more sober, I’d be beet red with embarrassment and looking for the nearest exit. They had a hard enough time convincing me to come out in the first place.
Kerri and Piper were already friends when I first started working at Henderson & Fitz Legal six months ago. We bonded over our obsession with soy lattes and bad reality shows. They knew I was relatively new to Vegas and hassled me endlessly about joining them for a night out on the town. They wanted to do it up Vegas-style and teased me, saying for someone in my mid-twenties, I sure acted like I was pushing forty—which was probably a bit closer to Kerri’s age.
Piper was in her mid-thirties. The quieter of the two, she was newly single and getting her groove back with the help of Kerri. I, on the other hand, had to have had a groove to get it back.
I hadn’t been in a long-term relationship since Chase in college, and that went up in smoke the moment I caught him in bed with some girl from his econ class—you know, the friend he swore up and down that that’s all she was. Well the joke was on me ‘cause I fell for it. I wasn’t scorned by the experience. It just so happened that I never really found anyone that I was comfortable enough with to think of as more than a friend, and now that I was at a new firm, I spent much more of my time trying to get ahead.
“Shhh, shhh.” Piper pressed her finger to her lips to silence. I didn’t know who she was shushing, but that one finger couldn’t contain the spit that sprayed past her lips. “We’ll have three shots. Make it a double for this one,” she said, clutching my shoulder. I think she was doing it more to hold herself up than in a gesture of solidarity.
“Maybe we should dance or eat. We’ve only been here an hour and my head feels sloshy.” My head seesawed from left to right as I talked to them, confirming the drunk feeling that had pervaded my body and mind. I usually didn’t drink like this. In fact, the last time I got even remotely drunk was actually on my 21st birthday.
Kerri continued looking at the bartender—young enough to be her son—who was making our drinks. I caught him giving her a cocky wink before he placed the shots in front of us.
“To a memorable night,” Kerri said, raising her glass like an offering. The contents sloshed over the rim and down her forearm, but she didn’t seem affected by her drunken display. Piper and I raised our glasses, not nearly as enthusiastically, before bringing the chilled rims to our lips and tossing back the contents. I watched Kerri pound back her drink before licking the drops from her forearm like the cat that got the cream. The burn of the alcohol wasn’t as strong as I had anticipated, and my stomach basked in the afterglow of alcoholic decadence.
Piper grabbed my hand, bouncing her way through the throngs of other sloshed patrons working off a long workweek. Kerri followed close behind, and soon we were dancing in a semi-circle to the sound of music that had the contents of my stomach rising and falling like bars on a synthesizer.
I always loved how alcohol made me feel less self-conscious about dancing in public. I was actually able to cut loose and spend more time looking at the people I was dancing with or alongside, versus staring at my feet and checking to see if my bottom half was moving to the beat. Kerri stuck to a simple two-step while Piper moved around in circles, reminding me of those old ribbon-dancer commercials. She looked almost childlike in her joy.
We danced like that through a few songs before I interrupted them with my need for a glass of water. They followed me back to the bar, and we weren’t there for two minutes before Kerri was shouting over the music, “Fuck me sideways. Piper, would you look at that.” She pointed to a man standing on the other end of the bar. He was slouched over the bar top with a tumbler placed between outstretched forearms that made my knees weak with their apparent strength. Following the line of his body, I could see that he was extremely tall, and his button-down shirt looked like if he flexed too hard the buttons would pop, pebbling across the counter and floor like M&M’s bursting from the package.
He wasn’t a man I would typically go for. He was a little too tall, a little too muscular, and maybe a little too handsome. He was someone to gawk at on the cover of magazines, someone to press you so deep into your mattress he would leave an outline of your body. It’s awful to think, especially from someone who considers herself to be a feminist, but he was someone to objectify. Maybe that was why I found it hard to look away. This man was like one of those white tigers or albino lions; they’re so rare and majestic that you can’t help but be enthralled by their beauty.
Glancing around at the people nearest him, I noticed he didn’t seem to pay any attention to the various women and men who were ogling him in obvious fascination.
“Jesus, isn’t he something,” Piper said as her tongue missed the straw of her water. I couldn’t help but laugh when I thought about it. We were just another group of onlookers swept up in some magic spell this man seemed to be casting on anyone with a pair of functioning eyes.
Returning to my water, I resisted the urge to turn my full body to face him as
my friends had done. Kerri bumped my shoulder, putting more strength in the movement than I think she intended, but enough to get my attention either way. When I turned my head, she simply nodded in his direction and said, “Honey, if you weren’t looking, I’d honestly think you were gay. Although I must say, that right there is probably more man than you could handle. You have to ease yourself in before you take on that mountain. Climb a few slopes first.”
I guess it was safe to say that my trying too hard not to look affected by him was blatant, and my friend wasn’t going to let me off that easily.
“I need the bathroom,” I said, looking around for a hidden hallway that typically concealed the bathrooms in places like those. I spotted a darkened area with a sign for the restrooms posted on a half-wall littered with other ads for various clubs and deejays.
The trip to the restroom was slightly sobering, but that was nothing compared to what awaited me when I stepped outside of the bathroom.
The man from the bar.
He was just a few steps from the partition, facing the entrance to the hallway as if he was waiting on someone. When I was a mere few feet from him, his face broke out into a remembering smile, leaving me stunned in its wake.
I glanced around, checking over my shoulder. I always hated that feeling that someone was looking or smiling at you, only to turn around and find that they weren’t looking at you at all. Except, when I turned around, there was no one directly facing him, which led me to believe that that smile was without a doubt intended for me. This mountain god is looking at me. Like he knows me.
“I saw you earlier, you know.” He tossed his words out as though they were something to say in passing, not to open a line of communication, but what did I know? I was drunk, and he was gorgeous. Under ordinary circumstances, I’d be scurrying back to the bar, urging my friends that I’d had my fun and it was time to go, but my mind was working slower, incapable of processing what was happening. All I could do was cycle through the deep rasp of his words and acknowledge how even the hairs on my arms were affected by him.