And that’s when the rest of it started coming back. Layla’s insistence on a trip to Vegas to get my mind off “that asshole,” as she liked to call Ken.
“Vegas is the perfect place to go,” Layla urged, letting both of her hands rest on my shoulders, “So many fallen stars there no one will notice you’re taking a break from shooting across the sky while you get your bearings again.”
For all of her chimney-smoking, tattoo-covered, spiked-boot ways, Layla really was a sweetheart.
At least I still have her.
I could always trust her to have my best interest at heart. And even though I knew that running off to Vegas wouldn’t make the nudes go away, wouldn’t make the studio give me my job back or turn Ken into a decent human being, I thought maybe it would help me to catch my breath again. To gain some perspective. Or at least it would give me a couple of hundred miles of distance from Ken and Fiona so that I could actually let myself have a good old fashioned ugly cry over how stupid I’d been to trust either of them.
I didn’t like to use my celebrity for free perks, but Layla convinced the stewardess to serve me red wine without carding me, insisting that 19 was basically 21 for a celebrity, because we aged faster. I think the woman just felt bad for me. Even if she hadn’t been following up on the latest gossip sites, I know I looked pretty rough.
The wine got me started, sniffling into Layla’s shoulder. Then there was the angry Cosmo on the strip. It was like I was walking through the steps of grief the second I started my getaway, with a different alcohol for each emotional transition.
All of that was followed by a series of seriously unwise investments at the blackjack tables. And then far, far too much Patrón gold tequila at the hotel bar…. That was when things got a little fuzzy in my head, and I’d hoped it was because it meant I’d somehow stumbled my way to my room and passed out without doing too much more damage to my body or my bank account.
I shifted in bed as the room spun, trying to get the sun out of my eyes, and I came to two realizations at once.
First, I was naked. The soft cotton of the sheets was actually a relief against my skin, momentarily distracting me from my headache.
Second, I realized that I was not alone.
A soft sort of snort at my side drove this point home, and I leapt from the bed with an uncomfortable yelp. It was a sound that most of America was familiar with by now. It was the noise Gabby Rover made every time she ended up with water dumped on her head, something that had happened all too often during my time on The Wild Rovers.
The form in the bed shifted, and it gathered itself into the shape of a not unattractive, if uncomfortably naked man, who gave me a lazy smile for half a second before wincing and squeezing his eyes shut.
Damn. That smile.
But I was too in shock to be able to enjoy the eye candy long.
“Jesus, Ava,” he muttered huskily into the pillow as I stared in horror at his thick, dark hair, plastered to the back of his head. He’d obviously slept as hard as I had. “How are you even upright? My head is killing me.”
“Whoa, back off there, champ. I don’t know you,” I said, sputtering and flailing a little, which was when I realized I was still just as completely naked as he was. I tried my best to channel Layla and stand there like I didn’t care that, when this strange man turned his head toward me and peeled one eye open, he could see all of my... everything. I’m pretty sure I failed, though, because a moment later I was grabbing a throw from the nearby couch and holding it in front of me.
“You’re kidding right?” the man said, pulling himself upright with a groan that tugged sweetly at something in my memory, making me blush bright red. It was one of the reasons I’d been hired for the Rovers in the first place. I could blush at the drop of a hat, and my pale skin showed every last spot of pink. “After all the shit you gave me about my middle name last night, you don’t even remember it?”
“All the shit I….” Okay, clearly this guy was insane. A stalker, maybe? Didn’t Hilary Swank have a stalker back in the day? That would be just my luck after everything else.
I started slowly backing away from the bed, glancing around the room to find something, anything, I could use as a potential weapon. “Look... sir,” I said, trying to keep calm and polite so as not to set him off, lest he become violent. “I’m sorry, but I think you might be confused. I really, really don’t know you, and I... I really, really don’t know what happened last night, or how I got here, or where…,” I trailed off as I spotted my underwear hanging off the bedroom doorknob, “...where all of my clothes are.”
“You really don’t remember?” the man asked, standing up to reveal a beautiful physique coupled with an apparent utter lack of embarrassment at being naked. I was trying not to look, but he was sort of all out there.
“I really, really don’t,” I repeated, trying to work out how to get to my panties and get them on without turning my back on him.
Just as I snatched them quickly and began to shimmy them up my thighs, the guy smiled again—the kind of smile I was used to seeing on smarmy producers and would-be celebrity boyfriends, all self-assured amusement.
“Well, that’s a shitty thing to hear from your wife.”
Chapter 2
Bennett
I talk too much.
I mean, this was a problem I’d had since I was a kid. I just can’t keep my goddamned mouth shut. My report cards always came home with a little note that said along the lines of, “Bennett is very bright, very creative, but he talks too much in class.”
Most of the time my mouth got me into trouble, which you would think would have taught me how to close it every so often. Yet there were enough times that it worked in my favor that the bad habit was reinforced just enough to stick around. Like how I was voted class president three years in a row because I talked myself into office. Or the time I got out of a speeding ticket when the officer said he’d do anything just to get me to shut up.
But watching Ava all nervous and blushing, insisting she didn’t remember anything from last night…. It almost struck me speechless.
Almost.
I liked to think I was pretty memorable, so it kind of pissed me off that she’d forgotten not just my name, but anything about the wild night we’d just had together. So as usual, I spoke without really thinking and called her my wife. I guess I thought it would be funny.
It wasn’t until after I’d said it that I thought about the fact that we were both pretty drunk last night, so it was kind of understandable that she’d forgotten some things. Still, I couldn’t believe she didn’t remember anything at all about what we’d... well, shared, I guess.
What we’d said to each other.
What we’d done to each other…
12 hours ago...
“I bet they’re not even real.”
Lifting my glass to the bartender for a refill, I swiveled a little on my stool toward the conversation happening at the booth to my right. Two young guys were leaning toward one another, speculating.
“Oh, they’re fucking real, man,” the floppy-eared dude with the backward Yankees hat whispered with a conspiratorial grin, “Did you see those pics?”
“No way they’re real,” said the other guy, basketball shorts and Nikes, oversized black tank top urging me to Just Do It. “I mean, she’s like gymnast tiny.”
It’s not that I made a habit of eavesdropping, but these guys weren’t being incredibly subtle, and I was only about five feet away. I turned again, hoping whoever they were talking about was far enough from their table that she would be unable to hear them. I mean I’m not perfect, but these dudes were pricks.
Down the bar from me sat a girl who was almost definitely too young to be drinking the tequila shots lined up in front of her. Her blond hair hid half her face, but what I could see of it looked pretty. Very fresh-faced. The kind of girl you take home to Mom, and definitely not the kind of girl these guys were likely to have seen “pics” of. Maybe it was a m
ix-up, maybe these two were on something more than just Budweiser.
“Fifty bucks says she’s bendy like a gymnast too,” the first guy said.
“You’re on, but you gotta get proof.”
“Naw, brah, the proof’s all over the Internet already.” They laughed a long, overly loud, drunk frat-boy laugh.
I had no idea what made me do what I did next. It’s not like I, of all people, should have cared if these guys had a little fun with someone. But when I looked back over to the girl knocking back shots of Patron, I knew she was looking to drink away some problem, and that made her much more likely to make stupid decisions. I knew because I’d been there. I’d made some epically stupid decisions after Al died. Some of them I’d come back from. Others… well, some things could never be made up for.
Whatever it was I saw in her, I found myself picking up my drink and carrying it over to the stool next to hers, intentionally placing myself between her and the frat house. The two idiots had gotten particularly disgusting by this point.
“Hi,” I said, offering her my hand. “I’m Bennett.”
She eyed me over her shot glass as though she wasn’t quite sure what to make of me. “Nice to meet you, Bennett,” she finally said, taking my hand and giving it an oddly professional shake.
“Woman of mystery, hm?” I teased, nodding to the bartender when he brought me my refill. “Should I try guessing your name?”
Again, she eyed me suspiciously over her shot before downing it quickly. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Why would I be kidding?” My eyes narrowed and I saw hers echo mine. Her head cocked a little bit.
“You... really don’t know who I am?” I could tell by her voice that she was having a hard time believing me.
“I really don’t,” I answered, glancing back at the table of guys to find they were now watching us way too closely. “Should I?” The two frat boys sure seemed to think they knew who this girl was. Maybe they were right after all.
She set the glass down and leaned toward me, frowning slightly for a long moment and then grinning, sudden and bright. It was... astonishing. She’d been pretty before, but when she smiled? This girl was a knockout. She could be a movie star.
“No,” she said with a soft, tripping laugh. “No, you really shouldn’t. I’m Ava.”
“Nice to meet you, Ava,” I said. “Can I buy your next drink?”
She smiled with her whole body this time. “I’d like that,” she said, and I had to steady myself on my stool.
10 hours ago…
She’d gotten over laughing at my middle name, Dallas, about an hour ago, but she refused to call me by my first name anymore. I’d been “Cowboy” for the last thirty minutes, at least. It made her laugh to say it, so I didn’t really mind. In fact, it was kind of hot.
“Wait, wait, wait,” she said, her knees pressing into my thigh, one hand on my arm. “You’re in town for a geek convention?” My thighs burned at the pressure from her body against them.
I laughed, and she shook her head, and it just felt natural to be leaning forward to tuck a strand of soft, golden hair behind her ear when it fell across her face. “It’s a technology expo, but yes.”
“You are so not a geek,” she said, reaching a hand up to mimic my gesture. Her fingertips traced a line down my neck from my ear to my collarbone, and I found myself shivering at the touch, anticipating more. Wanting more. Fire and ice burned intensely within my veins, spreading across my entire body and electrifying me. I tried to hide my reaction by widening my smile.
“I am the geekiest geek who will ever geek,” I assured her. “No one geeks harder than I do.”
“That sounds like a euphemism, Cowboy,” she said, sitting up straight as though she’d just realized she was stroking the line of my t-shirt collar. The next sip she took from her (second? third?) piña colada was dainty and prim. I let myself scoot closer to her.
“What about you, Miss Manners?” I asked, well into my third whiskey sour, and dropped my hand casually onto her knee. When she didn’t protest, I let my thumb stroke slowly over her thigh, leading my hand on a slow wander across her warm skin. “What are you doing in the city of sin?”
She caught my eye and gave me a grin so mischievous it caught me off guard. “I guess I’m looking to do some sinning,” her voice made my cock instantly hard.
9 hours ago...
Ava’s fingers slid up my back, under my shirt, her nails raking across my skin, stinging in bright lines of sensation. My hands were in her hair, tangling, messing up her prim, blond perfection. Almost as one, we reached for the bright round red emergency stop button, slamming our palms against it. As the elevator shuddered to a stop, I lifted her, pulling her legs around my waist. She caught on quickly, and I had the brief thought that I could have won fifty bucks from a frat guy for how effortlessly she clung to me, keeping herself upright as I lunged forward, pinning her to the opposite wall.
Somewhere in the past three hours, Ava had gone from that drunk girl I kind of wanted to help out to someone I was too impatient to wait two minutes to get inside. I yanked her underwear to one side, pressing two fingers into her tantalizing wetness, and I was rewarded with a low groan in my ear and the tug of her teeth on the corner of my jaw. Her manicured nails scraping teasingly at my neck.
“Wait, wait,” she was murmuring, and I only dimly heard her. “Condom,” she muttered. “In my purse.”
I was grateful that she remembered, but I was not interested in wasting time by digging around in her bag, not when I curled my fingers and she responded by clenching her pussy around them and letting out another sound that was even sexier than the first. Instead, I fumbled in my own pocket. “Always come prepared,” I said, tearing the packet open with my teeth and somehow managing to roll the condom over my thick rock hard dick with one hand.
“Should have known,” she breathed, her fingers twisting sharply in my hair as I thrust my fingers into her one more time. “Cowboy.” The name came out in a rasping groan. This girl was waking up all kinds of desires inside of me. But more than anything, I wanted to know her. I wanted her to know me.
And I needed to be inside of her. I had never needed anything so much in my entire life.
I pulled back to look hungrily into her deep eyes as I thrust home.
8 hours ago…
Ava had gone for ice wearing just my t-shirt. As soon as the door closed behind her I regretted letting her get out of my sight. The girl already had me. I couldn’t get enough of her, and the second the door closed behind her as she returned, I was on her again. I couldn’t help it. Her full breasts strained against my white cotton shirt, but as big and full as they were, the rest of her was tiny in comparison. I couldn’t resist picking her up again, shoving her hard against the door, both of us grunting at the impact. I barely managed to find another condom before I had to be inside her again. I needed to feel her perfect tightness gripping my dick, her manicured nails raking over my skin, her mouth pressed hungrily against my own. I pulled her legs up over my shoulders—she was light enough that I could hold her like that—and let gravity drop her onto my cock again and again and again.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she chanted, head thrown back, fingers desperately gripping my hair. “Please, please, please.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” I answered, slamming us hard into the door with each thrust until we both came, shouting.
7 hours ago…
Ava giggled over her tiny bottle of Cuervo. We’d raided the wet bar about an hour ago, and several tiny bottles were now littered around the room. “You did what?” she asked, her hand warm and comfortable in the middle of my chest as she smiled down at me.
I trailed my fingers up her arm, settling into the pillows a little more. “I set the lab on fire,” I repeated. “Well, technically Lief set it on fire. Although if I’d handed him the compound we were supposed to use, it would have been a contained explosion.”
“How contained?” she asked, finishing her bot
tle and climbing back into my lap, her hips rolling forward, letting my dick slide along the softness of her thighs. I could feel her shifting around, positioning me into a more interesting and tempting angle. Her eyes looked dewily into mine and she leaned forward to take my right nipple into her mouth and then bite it just a little. I felt all of the air leave my lungs.
“Contained enough... not to set the lab on fire,” I murmured, leaning up to kiss her and forgetting all about any other kind of chemistry.
6 hours ago…
She was going to take a shower, but she was stumbling, so I got up to help her to the bathroom. And then we were both stumbling. And then we tripped into the bathroom, and I fell back against the counter, but I couldn’t even pause to register the pain across my back because when I dropped to the floor, Ava dropped onto me, legs straddling my hips, and she rocked forward, teasing my cock between the slickness of her folds. Her hands fell to my shoulders, bracing her weight to keep herself from sinking down onto me completely, circling her hips in smooth, easy motions, like we had all the time in the world. Like we were really lovers. Like we were honeymooning, and we never wanted to stop touching but we weren’t in any rush. Like we’d known each other longer than a few hours.
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