Sin & Tonic

by Tessa Layne

  “The bedroom…just a few feet away,” I promise, grinding against her with a groan. Why the fuck didn’t I put another condom in my wallet?

  Because I wanted to make sure the next time was different. Special. In the privacy of my apartment and not the first empty space I could get her alone in.

  Almost there.

  “The bedroom,” she gasps, with a sultry, teasing laugh. Whatever reservations she’d been harboring in the elevator are well and truly left behind. “I’m honored. I thought your dates never saw the inside of your place.” A fresh assault of kisses and bites rain down over my neck and ear. “After my shower here last week, tonight will be twice already—those hotel gossips are worthless for reliable information.”

  Not as much as she might think.

  I haven’t brought a woman back to my place in six years. I made a point of it. But with Laine? Hell, I’ve been fantasizing about luring her into my bed for months, fine, for years. It never even crossed my mind to take her somewhere else.

  We make it to the bedroom and it’s as if a clothing bomb detonates while we strip each other naked, tossing everything aside. We’re frantic. Desperate. Panting and gasping. Crawling back onto the bed without breaking the kiss I need more than my next breath.

  Laine’s legs skim up my sides and my cock slides through her slick pussy, making me groan and rock against her again. Her eyes are heavy lidded, her lips swollen.

  “This is the last time though. Right?” she asks, and it wrecks me, knowing why she thinks that’s all I want. Because of me.

  I roll on a condom and slide the head down to her drenched opening. If I have my way, it will be the last time she asks me if it’s the last time.

  “Not a chance, baby.” And I sink deep.

  Laine

  Pillows, shoes, sheets, and an array of discarded clothing cover the floor, making my tiptoed trek across the mostly dark bedroom a treacherous one. I pick through one pile, then move on to pick through another. Where is it?

  “What are you looking for, beautiful?” Jason’s gruff voice sounds behind me, and I’m glad to be facing the other direction so he can’t see what that little endearment does to me. How much I like the way it sounds, even knowing how little it means.

  “My dress.” After a breath, I turn to him.

  Yikes.

  A scrap of blanket covers one leg and his waist—barely—leaving the rest of his muscled physique perfectly displayed. He runs a hand across his toned chest, folding the other arm behind his head. It’s a purely masculine motion, and the flex of his upper arms is too tempting to resist.

  I’d been planning my escape, but it’s not like staying a few more minutes will make this any worse. I climb back into bed. Jason’s mouth curves with his sexy grin.

  Taking one of my wrists, he pulls me across him to straddling his waist.

  “I thought we had this all worked out. You were going to stay naked for me; I was going to pleasure you beyond your wildest dreams.”

  I laugh. “I assure you; I’ve been thoroughly pleasured.”

  Jason smiles, running his hands over my hips and thighs. “Hmm, you’re saying all your needs have been met?” Thumbs coasting over the skin high on my inner thighs, he asks, “Every last one?”

  Oh man. Thirty seconds ago, I could have said yes and meant it, but with the way he has me pulled over him and his voice dropping to that sexy, dark rumble?

  I should probably lie.

  But then he’s there, teasing me open with his thumbs and finding where I’m already wet for him again.

  Why was I going to lie again?

  “You’re sure—absolutely sure—there isn’t a thing I can do for you, baby?”

  God, that feels good. Really good.

  Deep inside, my body is responding. Tightening and clenching.

  He sits up, bringing his mouth to mine, and murmurs, “Like feed you?”

  I blink and laugh. “What?”

  Shifting me back on his lap, he leans over the side of the bed to grab the white dress shirt he’d been wearing earlier. “I know for a fact you didn’t get a chance to eat dinner,” he says, holding the shirt up for me to slide my arms into. “And I’m about ninety percent you didn’t get lunch either.” He’s left the buttons undone and his eyes darken as they run the length of me, lingering at all the parts I’d expect. “I thought covering you up would give me a fighting chance at placing an order, but if anything, seeing you in my shirt….” Sliding his hand under the shirt, he cups my breast and brushes his thumb across my nipple until it goes hard for him.

  Swatting at his hand, I start on the buttons. “Okay, you’re right about the food and now that you’ve mentioned it, I’m suddenly starving.”

  He undoes one of the buttons I just did. “I have the best open-late Chinese delivery place. Chow’s. You like spicy?”

  “Chinese sounds fantastic. And the hotter the better.”

  Jason grins and grabs his phone off the nightstand to call.

  I’m trying not to read too much into Jason noticing that I didn’t have a chance to eat. And that he’d rather feed me than satisfy another craving. It’s the sort of thing I might have misinterpreted six months ago. The sort of thing that would have made my heart beat faster and started me thinking things I shouldn’t think…like this was more than a hook-up.

  I know better. I do.

  This is just Jason being Jason.

  After a warm greeting with whoever answers the phone at Chow’s, he begins ordering… and ordering. After the fifth item, I crawl off his lap, wondering how much carryout he eats. The man owns a five-star restaurant on the second floor, appears to have a fully functional kitchen in the penthouse, and yet he seems to have committed the entire Chow’s menu to memory.

  Pulling my hair from the neck of the shirt that smells like Jason’s cologne, I twist it over one shoulder and venture out into the apartment.

  I was here last week, but at the time, the only thing I was thinking about was how quickly I could get in and out. Tonight is different. Even with the low lighting, I’m struck by the open airy space. The entry opens into a vast living room with gray walls and white trim. Floor to ceiling windows offer views with the twinkling city lights on one side and a dark void of the lake on the other. Honeyed hardwood stretches in all directions. But what’s most striking is the stylish eclectic décor, so different from the boutique hotel space below.

  I walk through his personal space, running my finger along the back of a chair and the edge of a table, wondering if Jason selected the pieces himself. When I get to the baby grand, strong arms circle my waist. Jason pulls me in just long enough to drop a kiss at my neck. “Food’s going to be about twenty-five minutes.”

  “Do you play?” I ask.

  Wearing a pair of black track pants and no shirt, he slides onto the bench and, without sheet music or even a moment to think, begins what I easily recognize as “Fly Me to the Moon”.

  Whoa. Is there anything this man isn’t good at?

  Falling into the armchair beside the piano, I tuck my legs beneath me. He plays beautifully, fingers dancing over the keys with practiced ease.

  “Is this how you get all the girls to fall for you?”

  Jason smiles. “Why, is it getting me somewhere?”

  Yes. Even though I know it shouldn’t. “I don’t fall for playboys.”

  He smirks at me. “Playboys, huh?”

  “As if you don’t know your reputation. When I first started here, you had a different woman on your arm every time I saw you.” I arch my brow for emphasis. “I saw you a lot.”

  The song slows until he holds a single key then releases it.

  “Yeah? When was the last time you saw me with a woman, a date?”

  My smile falters. It’s been more than a year. Probably closer to eighteen months. “I don’t keep track of your dates.”

  “Hmm. Well, it’s been a while. And maybe I’m not quite the playboy you think.”

  The look I give him
says bullshit, and he laughs.

  “I’m serious. I mean if you look at the big picture, the span of years I was a ‘playboy’ might make up less than you’d expect.”

  Now it’s my turn to hmm, but Jason goes on. “In high school I dated the same girl for three years. We were going to college a thousand miles apart and broke up during Christmas vacation freshman year. It was a mutual decision and we stayed friends. And before you ask, I was faithful.”

  I’m shocked and my face must show it because Jason cocks his head with a smug smile.

  “I can’t even imagine you smitten over some sweet high school girl.”

  “No?” He asks, something in his eyes stirring the butterflies in my belly. “And she wasn’t that sweet. I have a type. I like a woman with a bit of bite behind her. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

  Heat crawls into my cheeks. He’s talking about me and suddenly I feel completely out of my depth.

  I swallow, feeling nervous again. “So what happened after that? You got a taste for freedom?”

  He picks up the song where he left off, laughing a little as he shakes his head. “Two relationships, about a year each, through college.”

  It’s my turn to laugh. “I can’t believe it. You were a relationship guy?”

  “Started that way.”

  Now he’s really got my attention, and when he doesn’t say anything more, I can’t stop myself from asking. “What happened?”

  “I found a girl I wanted to marry.”

  My heart stops. It’s painful and sudden and a reaction I shouldn’t be having to the news that this man had loved someone enough he’d wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. “You’re not divorced.” My voice is quiet, tentative.

  A shake of his head. He keeps playing, never missing a key.

  “I asked her. She said yes. And we would have made it down the aisle, except that a week before the wedding, I walked in on my fiancée with another guy.”

  “Jason,” I gasp, hating this nameless, faceless woman for the man in front of me. Now I get it. He’d been a romantic, and she’d broken that. “That’s unforgivable.”

  He shrugs, but it’s not nothing. The very fact that he’s telling me this now, after what we just spent the last hours doing says it’s not. He wants me to understand, and I’m starting to think I do.

  “I was lucky to find out before I married her.” He opens his mouth to say something else, but then closes it again. After another minute, he looks up at me. “Turned out everyone knew about what she’d been doing, but no one wanted to be the one to break the news to me. Anyway, when I told her it was over, she was furious.”

  I cough, sitting up straighter. “She was? That’s rich.”

  “Yeah, well, she’d wanted to be Mrs. Henley way more than she wanted me. Somehow, she thought what I wanted from her was more about what we looked like on paper… in the paper, I don’t know. She saw marriage as more of a business transaction and didn’t understand why I wouldn’t want to go through with the wedding anyway. Especially after she suggested we could both fuck whomever we pleased.” His jaw shifts to one side, and he shakes his head. “I was in love with her, so that was a big hurt. And the aftermath… It got ugly. Messy. Hell, it wasn’t something I was interested in risking again.”

  I’d known there was a history, but only in the most basic sense. Nothing like this. Looking at the man in front of me, his fingers dancing flawlessly over the keys, I wonder how any woman could choose to be with another. It didn’t make sense. “I’m sorry, Jason.”

  “Don’t be. I dodged a bullet.”

  I can’t help asking, “Do you still miss her? I mean I know you didn’t want to marry her, but you loved her enough to want the white picket fence once upon a time anyway.”

  “I realized a long time ago that the girl I’d loved wasn’t real. Or at least that it wasn’t a complete picture of who she really was. To answer your question, though, no, I don’t miss her, or even who I thought she’d been.” Then after a beat, he goes on. “But I think about her, probably more than I should. Hell, definitely more. I let what happened change me.”

  “Enter, the playboy?”

  His answering smile doesn’t quite make it to his eyes. “I closed myself off. I didn’t want to care. And I got really good at making sure I didn’t have the chance to start.”

  All the women. Never the same one twice.

  I wonder if he’d been lonely living like that.

  He’s telling me why he is the way he is. He wants me to understand why this, what happened with us tonight, is okay, but it can’t be more. And I do. I understand why he would have had to put that distance between us six months ago. Because what I wanted with Jason, hadn’t been about one night.

  “Thing is, as it turns out, I didn’t have to date someone to let them past my defenses.” He stops playing and holds my stare, letting his words sink in. “I remember you walking in the first time, your hair spun up in that neat twist, introducing yourself to all my staff with that big open smile, and that mouth you gave me.”

  I close my eyes, embarrassed anew, even after two years. “I didn’t know who you were.” He’d been behind the bar—something about losing a bet to Dil, I later learned—collar open and shirt sleeves rolled up as he wiped a glass dry. So sexy, it had taken me a moment to stop staring.

  He’s grinning again. “You thought I was hitting on you and put me in my place, but good. I liked it.”

  I’d almost died when Connie and I had our sit down with the hotel owner and Jason walked in. He’d been as professional and polite as can be while Connie was there, but once I’d been handed off as the new coordinator handling the Henley brides and she left, he’d started needling me for sport. Pushing and baiting, until there wasn’t any choice but to give him some of the sass he’d gotten the first time we met.

  It set the tone for our working relationship and it worked. We challenged each other. We pushed and played and bartered and negotiated, and along the way we became friends.

  “Laine, I thought I was so fucking smart. I knew there was something about you that hit me differently from the way other people did, but I didn’t want to think about what it meant. We were essentially co-workers. And then we were friends. And I wasn’t dating you, so it was supposed to be safe. Except I kept inching closer to that line I didn’t want to cross. What’s one dance at the holiday party? What’s the last dance? What’s a text here and there? What’s a call just because something made me think of you? What’s a drink or two in the bar after a successful event? What’s a few drinks after everyone else is gone?”

  I know where he’s going. What he’s saying.

  I hadn’t misread what was happening between us.

  There’s apology in his eyes as they meet mine. “I wanted what was happening between us, just as long as I could still believe I wasn’t breaking my own rules. When I realized how far over the line I’d actually gone—how much I already cared about you—I panicked and pushed you away.”

  The air feels thin in my lungs and despite being seated in what is no doubt a sturdy chair in a stable building, it feels like my foundation is shifting beneath me. Suddenly, I’m the vulnerable one again, not Jason.

  “I was an asshole. I was wrong. And I’m sorry.” He stands from the piano and comes to crouch in front me, taking my hand in his. “Laine, I thought I could take back how I felt. That I could reset our relationship. I tried. But the only thing I managed to do was hurt you and make myself fucking miserable. It was too late. The way I feel about you isn’t something I can take back, and it isn’t something I want to keep trying to fight.”

  Shaking my head, I edge out of the chair. Jason stands but gives me my space. “Are you telling me this, tonight, isn’t just about sex or trying to use whatever means are at your disposal—” I wave at him, mentally cataloging the low slung track pants, hard cut abs, sexy bed head and bare feet “to make sure I keep working the Henley weddings?”

  “What? Jesus, is that w
hat you thought? Laine, no.”

  “What was I supposed to think?” I snap, my emotions starting to spiral with the realization of what’s happening here. What Jason actually wants. “You pushed me away for months after that night. Made me doubt everything I thought I knew. And then suddenly you’re all over me about Connie. About keeping me at the Henley. Suddenly, you’re—we’re—” I shake my head and fling my hand at him. “What was I supposed to think!”

  Turning toward the wall of glass, I stare out at the glittering lights of the city beyond.

  Warm hands close around my arms, pulling me back into the solid strength of Jason’s body. “You’re supposed to think that I couldn’t stay away from you. That I realized what an epic fucking mistake I was making and about lost my mind. Laine, tell me this doesn’t feel right to you? Because it feels right to me.”

  How can I say no when I’m standing in his hold and it still doesn’t feel close enough? When for months he’s been putting distance between us, but the connection that pops and sizzles every time we’re in the same room has only gotten stronger?

  Turning within the circle of his arms, I find his eyes waiting for me, searching and sincere. Pulling me deeper with every breath until my hands are sliding into his hair and I’m pushing to my toes.

  My kiss is met with the tightening of his arms around me and a low groan that sounds like relief and hunger and affects me in ways I’m not expecting. Because that hold, it feels safe. It feels like relief. It feels like that one off-fitting puzzle piece finally sliding into place.

  It feels so right that I gasp against his lips, surprised by the sting of tears in my eyes. By how much I want this. Him.

  This isn’t our first kiss, but somehow it feels like it is. Like this is the kiss we came so close to that night six months ago. It’s sweet and hot and tender, deepening by degrees until we’re clinging to each other, sharing our breath. The shirt he wrapped me in, hanging open low on my arms.

  “You won’t regret this, Laine,” he says, resting his forehead against mine.