“But I need a coffee to go with the cupcakes,” she says with an innocent look.
“I know what you’re doing,” I mutter, steering her into Starbucks.
“What am I doing?”
“You’re turning this into a date.”
She laughs. “This is the world’s worst date. I promise that’s not what I’m doing.”
I snort.
“You don’t believe me.”
I shake my head.
“Fine,” she says, her voice still dancing with laughter. “But for the record, you have zero imagination if forced date is the only explanation you can come up with. And that doesn’t speak very highly of me, either, that I need to manipulate you into spending time with me on my birthday.”
“You don’t need to—”
She cuts me off. “I honestly just want a cupcake and coffee. For real.” She steps around a display of coffee beans, pauses for a second to admire a Valentine’s themed takeout mug on sale, then moves to the cash, where she orders a vanilla latte. “And…” She glances back at me. “A dark roast, black, for my friend here.”
I lift one eyebrow at her.
“What? I just assumed you wanted a boring old-man coffee.”
I laugh out loud, because that’s honest-to-God the funniest thing I’ve heard all day. Given that I’ve spent most of the day growling and fuming and worrying about her and her sister, that’s not saying much, but I still appreciate it nonetheless. “Yeah, okay.”
She smirks at me as we move to the far end of the coffee bar and wait for her order. Mine is good to go immediately. And she’s not wrong, I do prefer drip coffee—just with lots of cream and sugar in it. Which conveniently, I can fix myself while she’s waiting.
She waits until I set my cup back down on the bar next to her hand before telling me, casually as can be, what else she wants for her birthday. “After we eat the cupcakes, I’m going to suggest we have sex. Again. I mean, I’m going to suggest it again.” She turns to the barista who is about to hand Ali her latte and adds, totally unnecessarily, “We haven’t had sex yet, of course. It wouldn’t be sex again. I imagine once I wear down his defences, I won’t have to make such a big production about it the second, third, and twentieth times.”
She leaves me standing there, speechless, as she takes her latte with a grateful smile and goes to find a lid for it.
Fuck. Me.
“This was a trap,” I mutter under my breath as I hold the door for her. As soon as we get back to the hotel, I’m leaving her with her cupcakes and barricading myself in my room.
Except it’s her birthday and those are her birthday cupcakes and…Fuck. Me.
“It’s not a trap,” she whispers. “It’s me being ballsy and just saying what I want.”
“You weren’t being ballsy earlier when you dangled panties in my face?”
“Apparently not ballsy enough. That was more…teasing. Hailey said I should just tell you what I want. No games. So I want coffee and cupcakes, check, and then we can talk about what kind of sex we should have.”
Jesus. “We’re not going to have sex.” Even as I say that, my balls ache at the thought of getting naked together. Tasting every last inch of her and burying myself deep in her body.
“You’ve got the wrong idea about me, you know.”
“I do?”
“I’m not romanticizing you.”
“Good. I’m not a romantic guy.”
“I just want sex. Nothing else.”
I want to tell her that there are a million guys out there that could help her with that problem, no strings attached, no drama, but the words die in my mouth. I grunt instead, a neolithic sound that should turn her off if for no other reason than it reveals me to be an idiot incapable of speech.
“Literally, just a booty call.”
“No.” We’re at the hotel now, and I hold up the cupcake travel box as we head into the lobby. “And not another word, or I’m withholding your treats.”
She gasps, her eyes twinkling, and she presses her lips together.
She keeps that promise of silence the whole way up in the elevator. I hand her the cupcakes when we get to the room, and pull out the keycard. She knows the protocol now. She’s supposed to stand at the door while I do a quick sweep of the space.
Instead, she follows me through the suite. She sets her coffee next to mine on the tray on the leather ottoman, drops my jacket on the couch and her wrap on the floor, then trails after me into her room, where she kicks off her heels.
I ignore the desperate, horny thud in my groin at the sight of her bare feet—feet, for fucks sake, but they’re gorgeous, and that’s like her third step to naked. I stalk back to the living room space and wait for her to follow, because I’m not leaving her in her room, which is a trapped space, until I’ve verified the entire suite is safe.
She smiles as we clear my room, and she’s practically vibrating by the time I check the closet and the balcony and declare it safe for her to go to bed.
She doesn’t go to bed.
Instead, she throws herself onto the couch and pats the cushion beside her. I grab the cupcakes and set them on the couch between us.
She picks up the lemon one and swipes some of the icing with the tip of her tongue.
When I don’t react, at least not outwardly, she rolls her eyes and proceeds to eat the rest of the cupcake in the most delicate way possible. A swipe of icing, then a nibble of cake. Not a crumb falls as she consumes it, and my cock thickens as my brain readily transcribes what I’m seeing in front of me into an X-rated fantasy of Ali on her knees in front of me, lapping at my throbbing dick.
I shift in place and her gaze drops to my lap.
Aw, hell.
I cross my legs.
She laughs.
This is not happening. I grab one of the two chocolate cupcakes—I don’t count the raspberry one, because fruit has no place in a chocolate cupcake—and I peel back the wrapper.
I am not capable of eating it daintily. A crumb falls on my tie and before I get it, she’s leaning over the cupcake box and snagging it for herself.
“Yummy,” she whispers as she licks it off her finger.
“Stop it.”
“Make me.” She winks.
I stare her down as I finish eating, then I reach for my coffee. The staring contest continues as we finish our drinks, then I sit back and sigh. “Fine, you’ve got my full attention. Why me?”
“You’re hot.”
“Try harder.”
“You’re a good guy.” Not even a little bit. I snort, but she waves me off. "I've been watching you. You're good with Hailey—you get her. You see our fucked-up family and how screwed up our relationships are and you help smooth it over for her when she needs to bounce, or not show up at all."
"That's the job."
She shakes her head. "No. I've grown up around guys like you. Everyone has an angle. Nobody just does the job, no questions asked."
That makes me so mad at her father, who is a grade-A scum, and her mother, who has no moral compass that I am aware of. "They should."
"They don't. But you do.” She holds my gaze, daring me to tell her she’s wrong. She’s not, because yeah, I’m good at my job. She licks her lips. “And you want me.”
“No—”
“Don't deny it, not on my birthday. You want me," she repeats in a quick, staccato burst of nerves. "And you are a good guy, and I want this. I want you to have sex with me, because you're a good guy and you're hot and you want me. I want you too, in case that wasn't clear. But just for sex. I'm not—"
"Whoa. Slow down." If I ever thought Hailey was the earnest one, it was only because I hadn't had a conversation like this with Ali yet.
A dangerous, addictive conversation where her eyes are bright and her chest is rising and falling and her words have me so hard it hurts.
I don't want to like her. I don't want to think of her as Ali or know that she's lonely.
I definitely don't wan
t to be a red blooded man with the knowledge that she's turned on and willing—eager, even—but picky.
And she's picked me because she thinks I'm a good guy.
“I do want you. Any man would, and I’m flattered that you think I’m good enough for you. But you don’t really know me, and if you did, you wouldn’t want me. I’m not the guy you think I am.”
“Okay, scratch the good guy stuff. I don’t think the details of that matter for a one-night stand. What matters is that you wouldn’t kiss-and-tell, that I can trust you not to hurt me, that you’ll wear a condom, that kind of thing.”
“That’s not being a good guy, Ali, that’s just…Jesus, don’t have sex with anyone…fuck that, don’t have lunch with anyone who doesn’t think those are the most basic ground rules.”
“I haven’t.”
“Good.” I glare at her. “But the answer is still no.”
Her lower lip stiffens and she drops her gaze to the cupcakes. Silently, she closes up the box and stands, carrying them to the small kitchenette near the window.
I stand as well. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” I offer lamely. “You’re gorgeous.”
She doesn’t say anything.
When I was a SEAL, we practiced surviving torture techniques way more complicated than the silent treatment from a beautiful woman. Even Maddie never successfully managed to guilt me by giving me the cold shoulder.
But tonight—fuck, it’s her birthday. And I’m breaking her heart. I stand in the middle of the room, ready to take the hits when she turns around. I deserve them.
“You break every single one of my rules,” I say quietly. “And I definitely don’t seduce women young enough to be my—”
She whirls around. “I am not… whatever you were about to say, I am not that much younger than you.”
“I’m thirty-five.”
She blinks at me. “Well…okay. You’re older than I thought. I won’t hold that against you.”
“That doesn’t mean that I can’t hold it against me. And I would. I do. There’s no part of me that isn’t anxious about the fact that you’re twenty.”
She looks at my dick again. Fine. There’s one part that has zero problem with the fact that she’s barely legal. He twitches. More than okay with that fact.
“Another reason this is against the rules,” I say drily. “I’m a dirty old man.”
“I gotta say, banging my sister’s bodyguard is part of the appeal. So if you keep underlining the forbidden aspect of why we can’t, that’s just going to convince me that we should.”
“I’m not convincing you of anything. I’m just stating how it is.” To show her that I’m not getting into a confrontation over it, and that I’m totally fine with drawing that boundary—and no, I don’t need to run away to my room like a scared little boy—I take the armchair, which seems wise until she sighs and moves closer.
I walked right into that trap. Cole and Jason would be howling at me right now, because I’m cornered between a determined, sexy woman and the wall. Rookie mistake, and I’m no rookie.
“You’ve got rules,” she whispers, her lips twisting in a smirk. “And you think I can’t play within them?”
Alarm bells clang inside my head. “Something like that.”
“You wanna tell me what these rules are?”
“Nope. I want you to go to bed.”
“Tuck me in.”
“Not going to happen.”
“It’s my birthday.”
I need to get up and walk away from her. I try. I stand up, and she moves back. I need to walk past her and into my own room, tell her I’ll see her in the morning and close the door. But then she sighs and turns around, her long, honey-brown waves spilling down her back as she glances at me over her shoulder.
“If you won’t come tuck me in, the least you could do is unzip my dress.” She walks a few feet away from me, giving me lots of space.
I clear my throat. “You got into it, you can get yourself out of it.”
“I had Hailey’s help, actually. But okay. Hmmm.” She twists her arms behind her back—fuck, how is she that bendy? This is not good for my control. Her fingertips snag her zipper and she tugs, revealing a widening triangle of skin. Not the bra she flaunted earlier.
No bra at all.
Fuck me, because now all I can think about is the question, is she wearing those panties?
Is she wearing anything under that dress?
“Don’t jerk me around, Ali.” My voice is strained. I’m close to snapping. I don’t want her to know it’s really that I’m close to breaking, so I let her think I’m straight-up angry about the tease.
Truth is, I’m not sure she realizes just how far she’s pushing me. Something she said earlier has been bugging me.
Here’s to another year of bodyguard-enforced virginity.
She’s hot as fuck, and she’s been in college for almost three years.
No way is she still a virgin.
I haven’t.
“I’m not…” She sighs and turns around, and she’s gorgeous and sexy and totally innocent as she gives me a helpless little shoulder shrug. “Okay. I guess I’m pushing you hard. I’m sorry.”
God damn it. I scrub my hand over my face. “I don’t get involved with clients, or the family of clients. I don’t do high-profile relationships. I don’t have one-night stands.” The words drill out of me, slamming against her. “And those are just three of the reasons why this can’t happen. What else? Did you think about what happens when you wake up from this hormone-driven fun-fest?”
Her face slacks. She looks stricken. I’m an asshole.
“Maybe you aren’t thinking of the consequences. Maybe you can’t imagine them yet, but there are adult—”
“Stop calling me a child.”
“Stop acting like one.” I sigh as that hangs between us, harsher than it needs to be. And it’s not really true. “I’m the last person to romanticize sex, believe me, but—”
“Then don’t,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. Her dress is still unzipped behind her, and the straps are all loose and wobbly. I watch as one shifts to the outer edge of her shoulder. Another blithe shrug and it would drop down her arm, baring the top of her breast. “Don’t romanticize anything. Clearly I haven’t done a good enough job of making it clear that I’m just looking for a safe hook-up.”
“I told you. I don’t do casual hook-ups, so you’re out of luck.”
She frowns, her lower lip plumping out in a way that says, taste me, asshole. Taste me and then tell me you don’t want me. “What do you do?”
“All due respect, Ms. Reid, that’s not really your business.”
“Your hard-on says it is.” She recrosses her arms, loosening her hold on her dress. It slips a bit.
“He’s a liar.” Go to bed, I growl in my head, but somehow it doesn’t come out like I want it to. It doesn’t come out at all. I look away because I can’t stop staring at that bare bit of her chest, hungry for more. “And we need to stop talking about sex.”
“I would’ve thought your rule was that you always had to be in charge,” she whispered, and I snap my head back to her. Her words pull me closer. I can barely hear her, and I swear she drops her voice as I get within touching distance. I’m losing this battle, I realize with a start. I’ve been having this whole conversation thinking I’ve got a handle on the situation, but right now? I’m right where she wants me.
And fuck it all, I’m right where I want me, too.
I want her. I’m not going to let myself have her, of course, but I’m lying to us both if I pretend I want her to go to bed.
I want her to drop that dress and then come over here and climb me like a tree. I want her in my arms, hot and needy and innocent and wet…
I’m closer again. But I don’t touch her.
I’m not going to touch her.
I grasp for…something, anything. What comes out is completely wrong. It’s like I’m watching myself swallow the
hook. “That goes without saying.”
“That you’d be in charge?” she asks, her voice breathy and seductive. “And that it would be good, as long as I do what I’m told?”
“You wanna play some kind of Lolita game, Ali?” As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I know it’s even more the wrong thing to say. Way worse, really, because instead of letting myself be reeled in, I’ve yanked too hard on the rod. I wanted to stop this, and now I have, by insulting her.
She stiffens, her shoulder blades pulling tight as if she regrets giving me that slice of her bare back. The temperature in the room drops ten degrees.
She glares at me. “I’m a twenty-year-old woman and it’s my birthday. I don’t know what your problem is, but that I’m young and sexy can’t be it. And I don’t fetishize myself, you asshole. I won’t be shamed for hitting on you when I’m not doing anything wrong.”
I don’t have a good answer to that. But I can’t stand here and say nothing, so I offer, again, the lame truth. “We can’t happen.”
“Fine. I apologize for wanting in your pants.” When she goes to turn, it’s slow, like she doesn’t want to give me that slice of her back again.
I should accept it. I should let her go.
I shouldn’t cross the space between us and slide my hand around her arm, spinning her back against me.
I shouldn’t stare into her eyes and wonder how the hell I held out so long. Definitely shouldn’t lower my mouth to hers and kiss her.
But that’s exactly what I do.
And it’s fucking worth it.
—five—
Alison
I’m still thinking he’s going to chide me and send me to bed like a petulant child when he pulls me into his arms and his mouth comes down on mine. His hands slide into my hair and hold my head in place as he kisses me hard, then soft, then hard again when I whimper and open for him.
All I can think is, “Oh my God, he smells so good,” and then, “Wow, he tastes even better,” before my heart is racing too fast for individual thoughts to make sense.
Booty Call Page 3