Sexy As Sin

by Julie Kriss

The orgasm shivered up from deep in my belly, tensing my thighs as it shook me. I bit back a cry and rode the wave, my body hungry for every drop of pleasure. After a long minute I let out a breath and sagged back against Dane as his hand reluctantly left my throbbing skin and pulled down my dress.

  For a second, I was euphoric. There was no other word for it. I didn’t care where we were, that Dane and I had broken up a long time ago. I just felt so freaking good. I put my hand on his thigh, started to slide it upward. “What about you?” I asked, whispering as a soft conversation went on in the next room.

  Dane’s arm came around my waist and a growl came from his throat. He’d never made that sound before—possessive, primal, male. I shivered at the sound of it.

  But his free hand came down over mine, stopping its progress. “You know what I want,” he said roughly, his voice low. “You, in a bed. All mine. No one around and no time limits. So I can do anything to you I want, for as long as I want.” He let go of me, slid back, his heat leaving me. “Nothing else will ever fucking do.”

  And with that, Dane stood and silently left the room.

  Thirteen

  Ava

  * * *

  The beds at the Langham hotel were huge and as deep as a swimming pool. The bedding was heaven. I could have married the pillows. And there was a bathrobe in the bathroom—thick, pristine white, soft as a kitten’s fur. I was wearing it now as I sprawled on my bed, staring at the ceiling.

  Dinner had been delicious. After giving me that unexpected orgasm, Dane had returned to the dining room ten minutes later, taking his seat at the table again. He’d given me a look that was quietly hot and humorous at the same time. I had to wash my hands, he said. And then we ate sushi.

  We’d behaved. While we ate, we’d actually talked. About the other Tower VC partners and how they were. About other people we’d both known and where they’d ended up. We’d speculated about the more obscure things the restaurant put in front of us, sometimes Googling to figure out what they were.

  It should have been awkward, considering we’d just had almost-sex right there in almost-public. But this was Dane. It was easy to talk to Dane, even after that wild little episode. And he was right—I’d been wound up too tight. The orgasm had relaxed me in its weird way. We’d gotten the sex out of the way, so we could finally get down to business.

  We’d parted like two normal people—no fights, no hot makeout sessions on my bed. After behaving like the opposite of a gentleman, Dane had been respectful, even sweet. Nothing like his normal self at all.

  No, that wasn’t true. Dane’s normal self was respectful and sweet. He just didn’t usually bother to show it. And yet tonight, when he’d basically gotten to fourth base and almost all the way home, he’d been sweet to me.

  I closed my eyes. I should be embarrassed about that, embarrassed about what I’d let him do to me, but I wasn’t. It had felt good. He had felt good. Better than any other guy in the years since Dane had last put his hands on me. I’d die rather than admit it, but there it was.

  At least it had been…well, one-sided. I may have been embarrassingly easy when it came to Dane Scotland, but he’d had to eat dinner while suffering from blue balls. I had that much to say for my dignity.

  So why did I feel so unfulfilled?

  My phone rang, and for a second I was sure it was Dane. He could probably read my mind. But no, it was Jared, one of the agents at a stylists’ agency back home in Brooklyn. Like a lot of stylists, I worked freelance and I also took agency bookings when they came along. It gave me the best chance of getting steady work.

  It wasn’t like Jared, or any agency, to call this late. “Hi Jared, what’s up?” I asked when I answered the phone.

  “Ava, honey. Thank God you answered,” Jared said, sounding like I’d just saved him from certain death. When you worked in the fashion business, you worked with a lot of people who loved to sound dramatic. “I have an emergency for tomorrow. We have a Bergdorf shoot happening and the stylist cancelled. Something about a colonic gone wrong.”

  When you worked in fashion, you also got used to a lot of TMI. “A Bergdorf shoot?” I asked, skipping over the colonic part. “What Bergdorf shoot?”

  “For the winter collection,” Jared said. “It’s at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. Lots of coats and scarves. Looking out over the water, a moody feel. You know the idea. You could do it in your sleep, honey.”

  I sat up. Jared was right—I could do a shoot like that in my sleep. Because I’d done at least a dozen shoots for Bergdorf, including the one six months ago for the summer collection. “Bergdorf is shooting the winter collection without me?” I asked.

  There was a brief pause on the other end of the line that was almost awkward. It was the sound of Jared realizing he’d asked me to fill in on a shoot I wasn’t called for in the first place. “They’re trying some new ideas, some new directions,” he said. “There’s a new creative director, and he’s shaking things up.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Shaking things up by hiring a different stylist. I get it.”

  “Honey, you’re taking it personally,” Jared said. “Don’t do that. This is business.”

  “Who did they hire? The stylist with the bad colonic. Who was it?”

  Another brief pause, but Jared gave in. “Marissa Monday.”

  I felt the back of my neck go hot. Marissa Monday—I had no idea if that was her real name—was one of the hottest up-and-coming stylists in the business. She was good. She was also all of twenty-one, while I was wasting away at thirty, ready for the fashion nursing home. “So they hired Marissa Monday instead of me,” I said, “and when she got a bad colonic, they want me to fill in.”

  “Again with the personal,” Jared said. “At least they want you now. Go in tomorrow and really wow them, Ava. It’ll be great.”

  The heat was gone and I was numb now, my fingers numb on my phone. I made myself say the words. “I can’t. I’m in Chicago. On a job.”

  “For who?” Jared asked in surprise. “There’s no scene in Chicago.”

  “It’s more of, um, a private assignment,” I said, thinking of Dane dropping his jeans, the sight of his deathbed-worthy bare ass. “Someone who needs some one-on-one wardrobe work.”

  “I see.” Oh, yes. This was what I’d dreaded: not the disapproval in Jared’s voice, but the pity. Instead of shooting for Bergdorf, I was taking jobs for people who didn’t know how to dress. It was like I’d just shouted I’m a failure! into the phone. In case I was lying, he asked, “You’re sure you’re in Chicago?”

  “Yes, I’m sure I’m in Chicago.” And I was sure I was someone that Bergdorf didn’t call anymore. I’d suspected it for a while, but now it was official. I had been demoted to a fill-in, and after this I wouldn’t be called at all. “I’m sorry I can’t help you out. You’ll have to find someone else.”

  After we hung up, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and sat there, my mind blank. Bergdorf was shooting without me. They’d hired Marissa Monday instead, because she was younger and hotter than me. My phone hadn’t been ringing very often lately. How many other jobs had I been passed over for that I didn’t even know about?

  I still had my blog. I’d started writing it ten years ago, when it was still possible for blogs to be a big thing. I interviewed designers and models and talked about the latest looks. I worked hard on it, and for a long time the blog had been pretty popular, making me some semi-regular money. There was a matching Instagram account, too, with a lot of followers. But of late that had started to fall off, mostly because I wasn’t hot anymore. I’d even been told to delete the blog a few times, because blogs were old-school and made me look out of date.

  I stood up and walked to the full-length mirror on the bedroom wall. I stood in front of it, looking at myself for a long minute. Then I untied the robe and let it drop to the floor.

  I was wearing panties and nothing else. I had a gym membership, but I didn’t work out as much as I should have; I tried my be
st to eat healthy, but in reality my staples were toast, ramen, and margaritas. Even if I quit drinking and ate nothing but steamed broccoli, I’d still have boobs and hips. I looked at myself and realized I didn’t know how I felt about my body—whether I loved it, hated it, or felt somewhere in between.

  I focused on my hair instead. I was fickle about my hair, changing the color when I felt like it. It had been black, bright red, and a few times it had been streaked with purple or blue. I touched the bright blonde strands, running them through my fingers. Why had I bleached it? It had been an impulse. It had cost a lot of money, and now that it was done it would cost a lot more money for upkeep. Money I didn’t have.

  Fashion seemed shallow to most people, but the truth was, it was all about expressing how you felt. If you felt sexy, or smart, or serious, or casual, or even if you felt depressed and ready to tell everyone in the world to fuck off and leave you alone—you expressed yourself. You used your creativity, just like a painter or a musician would. You were a blank canvas, and you got to create yourself every day.

  The fact was, with that phone call—truthfully, since Dane had touched me in the restaurant—I didn’t feel like the sassy blonde stylist and blogger anymore. I looked at my body in the mirror, my blank canvas, and wondered what I did feel like. I’d buried the naïve nineteen-year-old brunette with the crush on her brother’s nerdy friend. I’d buried her deep, and I’d refused to think about her for eleven years. But in the mirror I could see that she was still there. She’d learned a lot of lessons, and she’d kissed a lot of frogs, but she was still there.

  I wasn’t ready for her to come out. That girl was still too raw—she hurt from too many things at once. The woman I’d replaced her with was tough and street-smart, ready for anything. She could make wry jokes about her terrible childhood and fool around with the man who’d gotten her pregnant once, and she could do it without getting her heart broken. I needed that woman now. I also needed a margarita to get me through the night. I hadn’t had nearly enough sake at the restaurant.

  I slid on the bathrobe again, though I didn’t tie it closed. What was I closing it for, anyway? No one was going to see me.

  Then I walked to the minibar and picked out a bottle of white wine. Because screw it—my brother was paying.

  Fourteen

  Dane

  * * *

  There was something wrong. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. On the surface, Ava seemed her normal self. She was sitting on my chair, wearing slim black Capri pants and a sleeveless top of baby blue. When she came through my door she was wearing black heels that had no back to them, so she could slip them on and off. She’d kicked the shoes off as soon as she walked in, and now she had her bare feet, with their pearly-pink toes, up on my ottoman. As she talked, I pulled out my phone and did some quiet Googling and discovered the kind of heels she’d been wearing were called mules. That was the term for them.

  I was never going to tell Ava I’d Googled that.

  “Kaito Okada,” Ava was saying. “He’s thirty-one, married. His wife was one of his marketing executives before they got married. They have no biological children, but they have adopted two children. The kids are aged eight and six.” She looked up at me. “Do you want their names?”

  I closed the browser on my phone with the photo of mules on it. “I’ll never remember their names. Besides, the kids won’t be there.”

  “Dane. Asking people about their children, especially by name, is one of the surest ways to get them to like you. It’s called a social skill. That’s what I’m trying to teach you here.”

  I put the phone down and looked at her. She was throwing lines at me like usual, but why did I get the feeling something was wrong? “I didn’t know you were supposed to teach me. I thought you were supposed to dress me.”

  “Yes, well.” Her gaze dropped down to the jeans I’d picked off the floor this morning, my navy blue tee. “I’m not doing a very good job. We seem to have backslid.”

  I didn’t like hearing that: I’m not doing a very good job. That didn’t sound like Ava. “You mean I have to wear the new clothes all the time?” I asked, trying to nudge her a little. “Even at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Even in bed?”

  She should have shot a comeback at me, preferably an insulting one, but instead her brow furrowed between her beautiful brown eyes. “I didn’t buy you any pajamas, so I guess not.”

  Pajamas? Was she kidding? My voice came out as a growl. “Save your money, because there’s no way I’m wearing fucking pajamas. I sleep naked.”

  That surprised her, and her gaze rose to mine. “You never slept naked before. You always wore T-shirts and boxer shorts.”

  “Because I was living with roommates. We were friends, but we kept our junk covered. A pretty simple rule. Plus, you were around a lot, so the junk rule was always in force.”

  Now a slow, rosy blush crept up her cheeks, and she looked uncomfortable and turned on. I didn’t know who this woman was, but she definitely wasn’t Ava. “Oh, right,” she said.

  Hell, no. I’d screwed this up somehow, and I had to fix it. “Was it the sex?” I asked her.

  Ava’s eyes went wide. “What?”

  “The thing I fucked up. That’s making you act weird. Was it the sex? Did I do something you didn’t want?” The words were like daggers in my throat, but I made myself say them. “Because I thought… I thought you liked it.”

  Her breath came out in a rush, her shoulders dropping. The blush climbed higher and redder on her cheeks. “It wasn’t the sex, Dane,” she said, sounding choked herself. “I, um, liked the sex.”

  Relief washed over me. I’d been so sure I could read Ava’s signals, understand what she wanted, even after all this time. To think I’d misread something so fucking important made me want to rip my own guts out. I wanted to tell her that, say something meaningful, but what came out was, “I’m glad you liked it. That was the idea.”

  It sounded seductive instead of like an explanation, and Ava blushed harder. That was interesting, and the horndog parts of me woke all the way up. I’d loved doing that to Ava at the restaurant last night—loved the way she’d reacted, the sounds she’d made. I’d loved the way she felt against me, that I’d been able to tell when she was close. Some things were seared into your brain every day of your fucking life, and for me it was the way Ava Winters felt when I made her climb higher and higher, all the way.

  I stood up and walked over to her chair, bracing my hands on the arms of her chair, boxing her in. It was the same pose I’d used at the tailor’s appointment, because from this position I could see every line of her expression, every flicker in her eyes. She couldn’t lie or escape me. I could see how her chest rose and fell, whether she was breathing fast. And, yeah, I had an excellent view of how the folds of her shirt clung to her breasts. It had been a long time since I’d seen Ava’s breasts, and I really liked looking at them.

  Sometimes, it’s just that simple.

  “Something’s wrong,” I said. “If it isn’t the sex, then tell me what it is.”

  “We shouldn’t do it again,” Ava said on a breath. “I mean, I appreciate the orgasm, thank you, but it’s a terrible idea, right? Just really, really bad.”

  I ignored her suggestion, because if I got what I wanted then we’d definitely be doing it again. “You’re welcome,” I said. “Was it better than an orgasm from a bartender or a would-be DJ? Be honest.”

  Ava cleared her throat. “No comment.”

  “Sure, you have a comment, Ava. You always do. Might as well say it.”

  She closed her eyes for a second, her dark lashes brushing her cheeks. She wasn’t wearing as much mascara today, and no eyeshadow at all. “Better, yes,” she said, her voice calmer now. “Definitely faster. Sometimes, for me, it… takes a while.”

  “To come?” I said, surprised. “No, it doesn’t.” At least, not the Ava I knew.

  “Yes, it does.” She shrugged, the motion a litt
le hard. I didn’t like it. “I’m not nineteen anymore, Dane. I’m thirty.”

  She emphasized the word thirty with a beat of unhappiness. “I’m aware,” I said. “I’m older than you are, and I still come in the same amount of time as I did back then.”

  She was silent for a second, as if speechless, and then she said, “Well, that’s fine, but you’re a man. My body is more complicated.”

  “Excellent. Consider me a student.”

  “Dane.”

  “Though I don’t really need to be a student, do I? Since I’ve already aced the topic.”

  She rolled her eyes, and for a second I saw her—the real Ava. “Okay, fine. You’re a sex god. Is that enough to feed your ego? Still, you have an unfair advantage.”

  “The advantage that I’m a natural genius at sex?”

  “No, the advantage that you know me a lot better than those guys did. We taught each other a lot, back in the old days. Which means,” she poked my chest with one finger, “I also have an unfair advantage with you.”

  She’d always had an unfair advantage with me, ever since the first night she got into my bed. But I said, “I’d like to see you prove it.”

  “No way. I just said it’s a bad idea. Besides, I don’t need to prove anything. I know I could drive you crazy if I wanted to.” She snapped her fingers. “Like that.”

  I’d lifted her mood, just a little. Enough to make the edges of her mouth smile. Enough that there was a quick, dirty sparkle in her eyes before she pretended it wasn’t there. I felt like I’d climbed Mount Everest. “Let’s go out,” I said.

  “Out where?”

  “Out of here. Away from the company and these fucking assignments. We used to do fun things, remember?” I stood up. “Put on your mules, woman. Let’s go.”

  Ava gasped. “Dane Scotland. You just referred to my shoes as mules. Correctly.”

  “That’s because I’m a genius,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”