Wild Rebel

by Laurelin Paige

  I turned my hand over so that Blondie and I were now palm to palm and imagined the dagger drawn on the back plunging through the heart of the woman on my other side. If only it had the power—if only I had the power to inflict pain on her.

  I didn’t believe for a minute that I did, but it felt damn good to pretend.

  Blondie moved close enough that her breasts pressed against my bicep. “What other tattoos do you have?”

  “That’s the kind of question better answered with my clothes off.”

  “But the tux makes them look so hot.”

  “They’re just as hot without. Trust me.” I hadn’t reached the level of drunk that I’d been aiming for, but it was about time to take this to my suite. The only thing keeping me was wanting a reaction from the woman next to me. She might not be at all bothered by me slutting it up in front of her, but she had to be irritated that I’d barely spared her a glance. She’d come looking for me. She at least wanted my attention.

  The bartender returned with the martini. “Charge it to your room?”

  I held my breath waiting for Julianna’s answer, praying she hadn’t gone so far as to book herself in the Park Hyatt. When she threw down a twenty, I was surprised to not feel more relief.

  “What’s yours?” Blondie asked the bartender. “You said it was on your arm?”

  I guess we were still talking about tats.

  “Tribal design. It goes all across here.” He gestured with his hand, indicating he had a half sleeve.

  Tribal design. If I weren’t so intoxicated, I’d kick his ass just for being predictable.

  But since I was intoxicated, and because I was obsessed and had been for years, I suddenly couldn’t think about anything other than the flesh above Julianna’s hip.

  “What’s yours?” I asked, the question out before I could stop myself.

  If she was surprised I’d spoken to her, she didn’t show it. “That’s the kind of question better answered with my clothes off.”

  Direct hit.

  Fuck her for landing it.

  Fuck her for making me steal a glance at her, and fuck my head for the split second of thinking about her naked.

  Remembering her naked.

  I finished off my bourbon, then pushed the glass toward the bartender. “Another.”

  So much for taking off soon.

  Seven

  At the realization that there would be at least one more drink before the action started, Blondie leaned in to whisper in my ear. “I’ll be back. I need to head to the ladies’.”

  I smiled like she’d said something dirty. Then, before she’d walked too far away, I pulled her back and kissed her. PDA wasn’t generally my M.O. Frankly, neither was kissing. I preferred to have as little of it as possible when I fucked.

  But this kiss was about making a point—the point that I was fine and desirable and not affected.

  I didn’t know if I was making that point for Jolie or for me.

  Blondie was breathless by the time I let her go, at any rate. My breathing had been erratic before our lips locked and had nothing to do with her. I didn’t even watch her walk away, when normally, if the woman from my past hadn’t shown up, I would have followed after for a quickie in the restroom.

  It was a couple tense seconds later that I realized that my much needed distraction had just walked away.

  I chugged down half the glass of bourbon the minute the bartender set it down.

  Maybe she’d leave.

  Maybe she wouldn’t say anything.

  Maybe she...

  “She’s right,” she said. “The tats are potently sexy combined with the tux.”

  I told myself not to engage.

  I didn’t listen. “I suppose that’s why I chose to wear it.”

  “To show off your tats?”

  “Yep.” Short. Clipped. The message clear: this conversation was done. She and I were done.

  “That’s a lot of fuss to show off a bit of color. And you can’t really see anything besides the ink on your hands—I’m assuming you have more underneath. You’d think you’d wear something that you could roll up. Show off the art on your arms or your chest. More likely, I’d say you probably wore the tux for some other reason. A wedding perhaps?”

  I felt tense all over, pissed off that she thought we could sit here and chat like there was nothing between us. Like we were strangers who’d just met at the bar.

  I dared another glance, allowing myself to check her out like she was just that—a stranger that I’d never seen before. She wore a black, spaghetti-strap dress with a slit up the thigh, the material sheer enough that I could see a hint of areola.

  Shit, she was hot.

  Not just woman-I’ve-been-fantasizing-about-for-eons hot, but grab-every-dick-in-the-rooms-attention hot. If she’d been a stranger who’d popped up at the bar—and if she hadn’t been interested in a threesome—I would have dumped Blondie for her.

  I probably would have dumped the idea of a threesome no matter what. Stranger in black made it impossible to see anyone but her once I was looking.

  What could have happened between us if this was when and how we’d met? No doubt I would have asked her to my room. Would she have come?

  Maybe because I was drunk or because I was fucked in the head or because there were parts of me that had longed to be in her presence for too long to walk away without more words exchanged, whatever the reason, I found myself turning toward her. Found myself putting on the charm. Found myself dipping a toe into the stranger fantasy. “I’d never let an event dictate my dress code.”

  “You dress for the ladies,” she said smoothly, as though we’d both been playing the fantasy all along.

  In a way, we had been. We were more strangers than anything else after all these years. It really didn’t take much pretending. “Definitely for the ladies. This look is a chick magnet.”

  “Does it really work?”

  “Seems to be working just fine.” I waited for her to protest, to say that she wasn’t drawn to me. Dared her with my stare to say it.

  She didn’t blink, but her eyes drifted toward the exit where Blondie had disappeared a few minutes before. “I think that one’s drunk enough to not care what you’re wearing.”

  “Is that a judgment?” I wanted it to be jealousy.

  She hesitated before grinning. “It’s an observation.”

  “You hand out observations to all the men you happen upon at bars?”

  “If they’re hot.” Blondie had already referred to me as such tonight, yet it felt like it was the first time I’d ever heard it. “If it will start a conversation.”

  “Judgy observations are an obnoxious way to get noticed. I’d recommend another tactic.”

  “I don’t know. Seems to be working just fine.” She smiled smugly this time, and I couldn’t help returning it. Her eyes had lit up, and it was even easier to look at her than it had been, and it had been very easy before.

  The banter was easy as well. Too easy. We could anticipate each other’s rhythm. There was no learning curve, just a fall into familiar patterns. If she were fishing in this pond, I’d already be in her bucket.

  I wasn’t sure if she was fishing. There was every chance she wanted to forget our past as much as I did, that she also sought closure. Leave it to her to go for the hot, sweaty ending. There might be benefits to fucking her out of my system. I could do that. All night long, if that’s what it took.

  It was more likely she was only trying to seduce me into helping her deal with her daddy issue.

  I took a sip of my drink, rerouting my thoughts. Reminding myself she was a stranger. “So you have the conversation started. Are you as good at keeping it going?”

  “I tend to find that starting is all I really need. After that, who needs talk?”

  She did this too well—the stranger game. The seduction. I wondered how often she did this sort of thing and hated myself for wanting to know all the names and details of every man she’d ever
hit on, ever sucked off, ever let inside her, just so I could track them down and bash each and every one of their heads into the ground.

  I would not kill for her. Not even in a jealous rage. Not even just in my head.

  “Pro at pickups, are you?” My tone was cool.

  “Never said that.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Really? Now who’s making judgments?”

  “Just observing, baby. Just observing.” I was such a liar. I was all judgment and jealousy, and even if I could successfully compartmentalize and separate the woman in front of me from the one from the past—from the one even this morning—that only worked for my head. These emotions were too primitive for reason.

  Still, I couldn’t tear myself away. “What about you? Why do you look so…” Sexy, spectacular, devastating. “Fancy?”

  She looked down at her outfit as if she’d forgotten what she put on. “Not sure a basic black dress counts as fancy.”

  “Huh. Just a basic black dress.” Now who was lying? That dress was anything but basic. That dress was a well-chosen weapon.

  But she kept up the ruse. “Heels and red lipstick. It’s a magic trick.”

  My eyes had a mind of their own, wandering down to where her steepled nipples pressed the fabric away from her body. God, in the right light, that dress was obscene. Made me want to do obscene things. “You use the magic trick for yourself or for someone else?”

  “I was hoping to run into someone.”

  “Then I’m getting in the way.” But I took a step closer.

  “You aren’t getting in the way at all.”

  For a handful of seconds I really considered it. Considered forgetting that I was the someone she’d been hoping to run into. Considered really letting myself be someone different. Considered slipping my arm around her waist and escorting her to my room for a night with no names and no strings and no baggage.

  But she’d expect there to be strings in the morning.

  And the baggage was sewn into me.

  And I knew her name better than I knew my own.

  I shot back the rest of my drink and slammed the empty glass on the bar so hard that eyes turned in our direction. I ignored them as I lay into her. “Why don’t you go by Julianna anymore?”

  There was a lot to be angry about when it came to her. Her name was only the first one to make it to the tip of my tongue, probably because it was the latest of the hurts she’d doled out over our lifetime, salt on a wound that would never ever heal.

  Her face fell, but she quickly recovered, and now she was the woman she’d been in the office. Softer. Provocative, but only because she couldn’t not be rather when seconds before it had been on purpose. “Julianna isn’t who I wanted to be.”

  “But that’s who you chose to be.”

  “I didn’t choose anything,” she snapped, as if I didn’t know anything about her.

  “Didn’t you?” My voice was a blade. “You had the chance to be Jolie. You didn’t take it.”

  “I know.”

  “You don’t get to pretend everything is water under the bridge.”

  She looked guiltier with this. “I know.”

  Her acknowledgments weren’t satisfying. Not when I wanted to fight. “You don’t get to pop up suddenly and try to tell me that’s who you are now.”

  “But it is,” she said, her blue-green eyes flashing. “It’s who I’ve always been. Since you gave me that name.”

  Now it was her with the blade, its tip held at my gut as she tried to tell me that Jolie had existed all these years without me. Trying to tell me that there was a very real part of her that was still mine.

  I wouldn’t hear it. Couldn’t. “That girl is gone. Honestly? I’m not sure she ever really existed.”

  Without giving her a chance to say anything else, I pushed away from the bar and crossed the lounge to meet Blondie returning from the restroom. “Let’s get out of here, baby,” I said.

  “Mm. Yes.”

  I grabbed her ass, glancing over my shoulder to be sure blue-green eyes were watching as I steered her toward the elevator. I could still spend tonight fucking Jolie out of my system.

  I’d just do it fucking some other girl.

  Eight

  I woke up with regrets.

  My neck ached from my awkward sleeping position. For some crazy reason, I’d decided to pass out on the couch. The hangover wasn’t too bad, at least. I knew well enough how to handle my liquor and had made sure I was plenty hydrated before I crashed.

  Nevertheless, my mouth tasted like shame, and my body ached with remorse.

  I shouldn’t have gone to the bar. I should have drunk myself into a stupor in the safety of my room. I shouldn’t have been somewhere that I could be found.

  I shouldn’t have come to New York in the first place.

  Movement from the suite’s bedroom reminded me why I’d ended up out here.

  “You’re awake,” Blondie said, walking out with the sheet wrapped around her body, mascara streaked and her eyes bleary.

  I’d forgotten about her.

  I’d forgotten about her when I was with her, to be honest. She was naked underneath that sheet, and I was fully aware I’d been the one who’d gotten her that way, but she hadn’t been who I’d been thinking about when I did. The woman I’d pictured underneath me had slightly smaller tits and specks of green in her blue eyes and a gaze that saw right into me.

  Yeah, I was a real piece of trash.

  I scrubbed my hand over my face. “Yeah. I’m awake.”

  “Sorry again about putting you out of a bed. You could have slept with me.” She was bashful with her flirting, not like she was trying to be coy, but like she was nervous about the morning-after routine.

  I wasn’t used to it myself. Generally, I was the asshole who made them go when the performance was through. Blondie was only here because she’d left her purse with her ID, phone, and room key at the bar, and by the time we’d gotten around to noticing, the place was closed up for the night. Since the front desk wouldn’t give her another room key without identification, I’d let her stay.

  Guess I wasn’t a complete asshole.

  “I don’t sleep well with others,” I told her, which was what I’d said last night as well as the truth. “It’s a me thing, not you.”

  She scanned the room, as though it was easier to look anywhere but directly at me. “Well. The restaurant should be open now. I’ll get dressed and get out of your hair.”

  She was hoping the purse had been tucked away in the restaurant safe rather than stolen, counting on it even since she refused use of my laptop when I offered so she could put a stop on her credit card.

  I didn’t have quite such an optimistic outlook on humanity. “If you wait until I get some things together, I’ll go down with you in case it’s not there.”

  I wasn’t sure what I’d offer to her if it wasn’t. I wasn’t going to leave her completely stranded, but I was also long past ready for her to be out of my hair.

  She shut the door to get changed, even though I’d seen everything, and I was grateful. If she’d left it open, it would have been an invitation, and I didn’t want to deal with hurt feelings when I turned it down. I wasn’t a fuck-every-chance-you-get kind of guy like Weston was. I had to be in the mood for sex, and for the most part, that mood only struck when I was lonely and liquored up.

  Or, apparently, when I was trying to distract myself from someone else.

  Shaking off thoughts of her, I pulled on the jeans and sweater I’d brought out from the bedroom the night before. Then I went to the closet by the front door to grab my duffel bag with gym clothes. There was a fitness center in the hotel, but I needed more than a treadmill and rowing machine. Fortunately, I’d located a boxing club a couple blocks away when I’d made my reservation, and I’d come prepared, suspecting I’d need to burn some energy off on this trip.

  By the time Blondie came back out, I had my shoes and coat on, ready to go. She’
d scrubbed her face and pulled her hair back into a bun held with the complimentary hotel pen and didn’t look like a woman who had partied too hard. Even so, the dress from last night was too much bling for daywear, making her walk of shame obvious.

  I considered loaning her my coat, but I needed my coat, and I didn’t owe her anything, so I didn’t feel too bad about not making the offer. With a nod, I gestured to the door and followed her out. Thankfully, she didn’t attempt to make small talk, and we managed to get in the elevator and travel to the lobby floor in silence.

  There was a group of people waiting for the elevator when the doors opened. I put a gentlemanly hand at Blondie’s back to steer her around them, and so that’s how we were when Jolie saw us.

  Actually, I saw her first, which was why I didn’t drop my hand immediately.

  She was impossible to miss, her voice raised as she argued with the front desk clerk. “No, it’s not fine. I need the room until Friday.”

  I couldn’t hear the clerk’s response. I wasn’t sure she heard it either because that was the moment she looked up and saw me, my arm around the woman from the night before, and for a full second I gloated. How many times had I wished for exactly that scenario? To bump into Jolie with a younger, prettier woman on my arm. To show her I was doing better than fine and she could eat her heart out.

  It only lasted that second, though, before it fizzled into misery. Blondie wasn’t prettier by a long shot, and even if she were, she didn’t mean anything to me, and I wasn’t doing fine, and it was highly unlikely Jolie would ever eat her heart out over me. That was me that did that. That was still doing it.

  I dropped my hand, and Jolie turned her focus back to the clerk. Her voice softer now, but still discernible. “Could you try it again? I know you already did, but just once more?”

  It wasn’t my business. Whatever she was fussing about, I wasn’t part of it. I needed to keep walking.

  “Hey, uh.” I stumbled since I didn’t have a name to end the statement with. “How about you go on ahead? I’m going to be…” I nodded at the desk. At Jolie.