“Maybe we should loosen your tongue.” I picked up his first beer, the one he hadn’t even finished yet, and handed it to him. “I’d love to have a conversation with Ronan Sterling, unfiltered.”
“You mean drunk.”
“That, too.”
He eyed me over the rim of his glass. “You know, I have a policy. I don’t drink with clients.”
Nice try.
“I’m gonna assume you don’t usually fuck them, or date them, either.”
“That would be true.”
“So? You’re already breaking the rules tonight. Why not go nuts?”
“Uh, going nuts isn’t really my style.”
“Then go nice,” I said. “The fact that when you get drunk you get ‘nicer’ tells me you’re nice already. The lack of filter just lets you express it a little easier.”
“Maybe that’s the problem,” he muttered into his beer.
“We could find a reason to drink,” I suggested. “If that makes you feel better about it. We could be celebrating.”
“Celebrating what?”
“Your newfound freedom from the rules.”
He gave me a look.
“For tonight, I mean.” I figured anything more than one night might’ve blown his mind too much.
Baby steps.
“And that’s something to celebrate?” he asked.
“Hell, yes. It doesn’t take much, anyway. I’ll celebrate pretty much anything.”
“I noticed.”
“In my opinion, life is one big celebration.”
“I noticed that, too.”
“You notice everything, I know. And yet… I know very little about you.” I cocked my head at him. “You just agreed that you’re my boyfriend and I’ve convinced you to introduce me to your favorite uncle. But I haven’t even seen your apartment. Do you have an apartment?”
I knew he did. He’d told me so.
“I do.”
“You don’t spend much time there.”
“Not lately.”
“Then maybe we should swing by. You know… make sure your plants haven’t died, that kind of thing.”
“I don’t have plants.”
“Ugh, Ronan,” I complained. “Work with me here. I want to see your place. I was trying to be subtle about it.” I took a sip of my drink, eye-fucking him over the rim of the glass.
“Were you?” he said, eye-fucking me back.
“Yes. Now what does a girl have to do to get you to take her back to your place, throw her down and fuck her on your bed?”
He watched as I licked Crantini off my bottom lip. Slowly.
Then his eyes met mine again, hooded with desire.
“That’s pretty much it.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Summer
After dinner, Ronan took me back to his apartment like I wanted him to.
And Andre came with us.
I invited him. If Ronan wanted to bring another man along on our first date, but wouldn’t tell him we were on a date… so be it. I could play along.
Though it was possibly my third Crantini that decided this was a grand idea.
Ronan had stuck with the two beers at the restaurant, refusing to get drunk with me in public, “just in case.” And Andre was solidly on water. But once we closed the door of Ronan’s apartment behind us, I figured all bets would be off.
Andre was now off-duty, we were just three people hanging out together on a Friday night, and we could all drink our faces off in the security and privacy of Ronan’s apartment.
I was doing my best to work around his rules, any way I could.
He lived in a nice, newer condo building just off South Granville’s art gallery row. His building stood among the other newish condo developments and some commercial buildings, a few small restaurants and art galleries. The cab dropped us at the front door, and Ronan let us in through the elegant lobby.
Andre brought up the rear with our booze.
We’d stopped off at a liquor store on the way, because Andre had informed me that the liquor offerings at Ronan’s place would be “abysmal.” We bought a two-hundred-dollar bottle of tequila—my treat, because Ronan insisted on paying for dinner and drinks at the restaurant. Andre paid for the cab, and the novelty shot glasses he found at the dollar store next to the liquor store.
As soon as we were inside Ronan’s place, Andre cracked open the tequila, poured out shots and handed us each a glass.
His said: Party Animal. It had a cartoon pig on it, sitting in a puddle of mud or shit, I wasn’t sure which.
Mine said: Queen. It had a little crown on it.
Ronan’s said: Tears of my employees.
We shot the tequila back, and Andre took a photo of Ronan drinking from his Tears of my employees glass. Then he split a gut, and while he mopped tears from his eyes, he said, “Bro, that’s going on the company website.”
At which point Ronan confiscated Andre’s phone and turned it off.
Then Andre served up another round of shots, and another, while Ronan showed me around a bit. It was a one-bedroom condo, nicely furnished, bachelor style. Clean. Tasteful.
Suited him.
But it was lacking some serious soul. Obviously, he didn’t spend much time here.
“Well,” I told him, “I’m glad to see you don’t have any plants withering away here.” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Or pets.”
“Yeah. I’d have a dog, maybe. They’re better company than plants. And more loyal than people.” His eyes met mine, and I could see he instantly regretted saying that. Not because he didn’t mean it, but because he’d said more than he wanted to say.
Revealed more about himself than he wanted to reveal.
The beers and tequila were already kicking in.
I filed it all away in my mental Mystery of Ronan Sterling dossier.
Prefers dogs to people.
Thinks people are disloyal.
Has been hurt, disappointed and/or betrayed by others in the past? Possibly repeatedly.
“Besides,” he added quickly, “then I’d have to take care of it, and who has time for that, right?”
“Mmm,” I murmured noncommittally. I was just hoping he’d keep talking. Keep revealing his naked self to me, so to speak, in lovely alcohol-stripped layers.
“Are you ever home?” I asked him as I glimpsed his sparsely furnished bedroom, suspiciously devoid of any clothes on the floor or personal effects on the dresser. The bed was even neatly made.
“Not often enough to know if I’ve left it lady friendly.” He poked his head into the bathroom, then popped back out. “All clear.”
“Uh-huh.”
Keeps himself busy with work so he doesn’t have to deal with other people’s needs. Including those of any women he might bring home.
“And how long have you owned this place?” I asked him.
“I don’t own it. I rent.”
Hmm. Doesn’t plan for the future?
Or is afraid of commitment?
He then went out of his way to move a set of hand weights in the hallway so I wouldn’t trip on them, even though they were zero-percent in my way.
Underneath the tough guy exterior, has a big heart and a deep need to protect people.
I wondered if maybe some people—the less-loyal-than-dogs people—had taken advantage of that trait.
Hard to imagine the big alpha in front of me letting anyone take advantage of him. But everyone had their vulnerabilities, whether they wanted to or not, right? Their soft spots, so to speak.
When we’d circled back to the kitchen island, where Andre was pouring out shots again, we did another round.
“That is good tequila,” Andre remarked.
It was. We were probably supposed to be sipping it rather than shooting it, but oh well. I was getting drunk and I hardly even noticed. I felt warm and fabulous all over and we hadn’t even put any music on yet.
Ronan was getting drunk, too. For sure. And as it turned out,
drunk Ronan was just as no-bullshit honest as sober Ronan. He just talked more.
A lot more.
And he was nice about it.
“You’re so beautiful,” he told me, twice, while we made popcorn in a pot on his stove.
Andre was in the adjoining living room, trying to play DJ with the sad music collection on Ronan’s home computer. Dinner seemed so long ago already, I had the munchies, so snacks were first priority. After that, I’d take over the music. I’d already joined Ronan’s WiFi and connected my phone to his speakers, pretty much the moment I stepped in the door.
“Find 3 Doors Down,” I called to Andre. “I know he has them.” I grinned at Ronan.
A moment later, “Kryptonite” started playing.
“I love how you love music,” Ronan said, staring at me. “It makes me want to pay more attention to music.”
“Good. Then I’ve done my job.”
His gaze lingered on my lips. “I thought your job was to make people happy.”
“Are you happy right now?”
He was leaning into me, closer and closer. And I wondered if he’d actually throw drunken caution to the wind and kiss me in front of Andre. “Yeah…” he breathed, his lips an inch from mine.
I smelled something… off.
“Burning!” I blurted, and we both jumped into action. He grabbed the pot off the stove and I snatched the big bowl he’d set out on the counter, laughing. He dumped the popcorn into it. It wasn’t too bad. I picked out the burnt ones, then buttered and salted.
I watched as Ronan ate the burnt ones I’d picked out. He shrugged. “I like the burnt ones.”
“I hate empty calories,” I complained, as I ate a handful of popcorn and washed it back with a tequila shot.
“But they look good on you,” Ronan said, his eyes moving over my body. When they met mine again, they widened. “That was a compliment. I meant… you’re so beautiful.”
I wondered if he realized how many times he’d already said that to me tonight.
I was definitely enjoying Unfiltered Ronan.
The three of us sat down around his dining room table—after Ronan pulled out my chair for me—with the popcorn, the bottle of tequila and our silly shot glasses. Andre poured us out another round of shots.
I wasn’t sure how many we’d done. They were all kinda blurring together now.
“To getting drunk and stuff,” Andre aptly toasted us. After we’d downed the shots, he burped and said, “So, now what? Drinking games? Kings Cup?”
“We need more people for that,” I said.
“Drunk Jenga?”
“Do I look like a man who owns Jenga?” Ronan said.
Both Andre and I looked at him.
“Never Have I Ever?” Andre suggested. “Truth or Dare?”
“We’re not twelve-year-old girls,” Ronan pointed out.
“Then what’re we doing here with all the shots, if not playing drinking games?” Andre inquired.
“We’re getting Ronan to loosen up his professional boundaries,” I said.
“Oh, shit. Why didn’t ya say so? Strip poker it is.”
“Ooooohh,” I said. “I love that.”
“Nope,” Ronan said. “Veto.”
“And since when do you get a veto?” I demanded. “If we’re voting, let’s vote.”
Andre and I both shot a hand up in the air.
“Sorry, Ronan,” Andre said. He didn’t sound sorry.
Then he got up and went digging in the hall closet, presumably looking for poker stuff.
“Come on,” I taunted my date, “when was the last time you totally let loose, and played strip poker with a co-worker and one of your clients?”
“Uh, never.”
“See?” Andre said, heading into the kitchen. “Meant to be.”
“Deal ’em up!” I said cheerfully.
Ronan groaned.
Andre was sifting through a kitchen drawer. “Where’s your cards and stuff?”
I poured us all another shot.
“Slight problem…” Ronan said, as Andre’s search moved into the living room. We clinked and tossed back our shots.
“Found cards!” Andre’s head was now under the living room coffee table. He thrust a deck of playing cards victoriously in the air.
“… I don’t have poker chips,” Ronan informed us.
Now Andre groaned. “What dude doesn’t own poker chips?”
“One who doesn’t play poker?”
“We could play Blackball,” I suggested.
“What’s that?” Andre placed the deck of cards in front of me and sat down.
“I’ll teach you. I used to play it with my grandparents.” Though we’d never stripped while we did it… “I need paper and pens.”
Ronan sighed. “I’ll get them.” I shuffled the deck while he went looking.
“Do you know Whist?” I asked them, dealing out the cards.
“Sure,” Andre said.
“What’s Whist?” Ronan returned with a pad of note paper. And three sparkly pens that said Darla Draperton on the side in fancy lettering… with a tiny picture of a floating head; when I looked closely, it was a man in makeup and a big blonde wig.
“What the hell is this?” I said.
Andre craned his neck to see. “Ronan had a drag queen for a client,” he supplied.
I blinked at Ronan.
“She always gave me swag.” He shrugged. “She liked sparkly shit.”
“You know, you are a lot more interesting than I thought you’d be when we first met,” I told him. “No offense.”
“None taken,” he said, with that faint smile he’d had on his face ever since the third or so shot of tequila.
And fucking hell, he was handsome.
Mine.
I’d licked him—thoroughly—and he was totally mine. I had dibs all over the man, and I was keeping him.
My drunk mind made the decision, just like that.
“Okay,” I said, trying to focus. “Blackball is kinda-sorta like a modified version of Whist,” I explained, though clearly that meant nothing to Ronan. I ripped off three sheets of paper and wrote a line of numerals on each paper, starting at 10 and counting down to 1, in a vertical line. Then I gave each of us one of the papers and a pen. “There are ten rounds. The first round corresponds to the ten on your paper, then the second round is nine, and so on. For the first round, we each get ten cards. Then next round we get nine, and so forth. The goal is to win ‘tricks,’ by playing the highest card. Aces are high, by the way, twos are low. You look at your hand and for this round, you decide how many tricks you think you’ll win out of ten. You can say anything from zero to ten. You write that down on your paper. That’s called your bet.”
“This sounds like Oh Hell,” Andre said. “I used to play that with my cousins.”
“Could be,” I said. “There’s probably a million variations. Oh, and the total number of tricks bid between all of us can’t equal the number available. So for example, when we’re playing the first round, if you guys both bid five, five plus five equals ten, so I can’t then bid zero. I’d have to bid at least one. Follow?”
“I’m with you,” Andre said solemnly.
Ronan looked utterly lost.
I kinda liked that look on him. It was pretty adorable.
“We all try to win the exact number of tricks we bet,” I went on. “That’s the goal. If we do, we get to write down a one before the number we bet, and we get that many points. So a bet of one becomes eleven points. A bet of zero becomes ten points. If we don’t win our tricks, we get a blackball. You don’t want those.”
“What’s a blackball?” Ronan asked.
“It’s worth zero points. You literally draw a little black ball on your paper instead of points for that round.”
“So how do we get the tricks?”
“Well, I’m the dealer,” I said, “and play starts to the dealer’s left. So, Ronan, you go first. You play a card. You want to play a high car
d. Then we go clockwise and each play a card. The highest card played in the suit that Ronan played wins the trick. But if a trump card is played, it wins. There’s a trump suit for each round. The order goes spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds, then no trump, then it starts over again. So this round is spades.”
“You expect me to follow this?” Ronan said. “I don’t think I could follow this sober.” He was definitely looking drunker by the minute. Those last couple of shots were really sinking in.
I wondered if my giant alpha bodyguard was a lightweight.
Doesn’t drink often and gets wasted easily. Noted.
“I think you’re missing the point,” I said.
“You’re not supposed to follow,” Andre supplied. “You’re supposed to get naked.” He looked at me pretty soberly for a drunk person. Definitely had a higher tolerance than his boss. “When do we take off our clothes?”
“Anytime we get a blackball, baby.”
I put on Etta James, “You Can Leave Your Hat On,” and we got down to business.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Ronan muttered.
And as it turned out, he was the first—and only—one of us to get a blackball in the first round.
Andre and I put back another shot and watched with amusement as Ronan drew his little black ball on his paper. “Kinda looks like a blue ball to me,” Andre quipped, referring to the sparkly blue ink of Ronan’s pen.
“Good one,” Ronan muttered.
Then he slipped off his watch, really slowly, like he was performing a watch strip-fetish show.
“Bold move, brother,” Andre said, having his back.
“Very risqué,” I teased. “You know, in some countries it’s illegal for a man to show that much wrist in public.”
The next round, Andre got his first blackball and lost his shirt. He was wearing no watch and no jewelry, so he’d probably be getting naked pretty damn fast.
I had no problem with that. Andre had a nice body.
Next round went Ronan’s shirt, and before I could say pour me another, I was sitting at a table with two built, shirtless men.
Fuck, my life was good.
I also got my first blackball that round, though. I removed my necklace, to Andre’s whistle.
Sweet Temptation: A Players Rockstar Romance (Players, Book 3) Page 39
