Love Ever After: Eleven All-New Romances!

by Nina Lane

  “What you don’t understand, Scottie, is that there are consequences for breaking the rules.” He was so close. “There are always consequences.”

  “Do what you want,” I told him grandly, because in that moment I don’t think I’d have cared if I was standing in the path of a train, I wanted him so much. At any other time, that might have scared me. “Just kiss me first.”

  And he did.

  Finally, he did.

  If there was any part of me that thought what had happened between us in that private room inside the club was a fluke, that out here on the street in the city where there was less pounding music and more stark reality it might just be a kiss after all—he swept it away.

  Damon held me to him until I wrapped my arms around his waist and then he shifted to hold my face between his hands, and he kissed me like a starving man. He kissed me with all the desperate passion and wild hunger that was storming inside of me, stirred to a fever pitch all over again. He kissed me with such fire, such sheer and dizzying madness, that I understood in a giddy rush exactly how much he’d been holding back all night.

  It made me feel small and precious. Cared for beyond measure.

  I’d never felt anything like it in my life.

  He pulled away, and his breath came hard, tangling with mine.

  “This is crazy,” he muttered, and I only dimly realized our town car had pulled up in the street beside us when he tore his gaze from mine to look at it. When he looked back, his gaze was bright blue and something like troubled. “You’re making it hard to remember I’m supposed to be in control of this. I need to get you home before I get us both arrested.”

  I found myself grinning at him. “I don’t know. It could be a whole night of firsts. With a mug shot to commemorate the experience. Every girl’s dream.”

  Damon didn’t smile back. There was a rawness in the way he looked at me, and his hand was still holding my cheek as if he couldn’t quite make himself let go.

  “That’s appealing, of course. But I think I’ll go with my original plan.” He let go of me then and pulled open the door, the gesture as efficient as it was chivalrous, and I liked both of those things a little too much. “Get in the car.”

  He gave me back my jacket when we were shut away in the car’s interior, though I had no use for it. He hauled me against his side the moment the car slid into traffic, plastering me against all that heat he emanated like a furnace, and I certainly didn’t protest. He felt too good, like concentrated summer sunshine.

  He didn’t speak. He trained his attention on his phone, scrolling through his messages and only replying every now and again. I got the distinct impression he was annoyed by the whole thing—but Granger & Knox litigators were never really off the clock, I reminded myself, as I pretended being held like this in the back seat of a quiet car didn’t soothe me from the tip of my head straight down to the soles of my feet. This was the game. Lawyers in firms like ours were expected to be endlessly available, night and day, seven days a week, every single day of the year.

  There was a certain exultation in this life of ours. There were always three phone calls to return, always six messages that needed instant replies, always more work to do. Always. I’d never been busier in my life and I loved it—the hustle and the panic and the excitement of all the expectations placed on newly-minted attorneys like me in big firms like Granger & Knox. Briefs to write and legal assistants to oversee and cases to prepare for the upper level associates to take to the partners. Second or third chairing at trials and the odd plum assignment as I paid my dues, like getting to be first chair when I wasn’t expecting it. I got off on it or I would have burned out like so many of the other first years I knew. I wasn’t like the ones who’d already left and the ones I knew wouldn’t be far behind by the hollow, blank look in their eyes. I liked the game.

  I’d always thought Damon Patrick was exactly the sort of lawyer who lived for the game. I’d have sworn he was, before tonight, though the clear irritation I could feel coming off him now told me otherwise. It made me feel… unsettled. I didn’t want him to be something other than the man I’d imagined he was. I didn’t want him to be anything but the uncomplicated god of sex I’d always been so sure he was, in the car this morning and as long as I’d known him.

  Did I?

  I shook it off when the car came to a stop. And everything seemed to snap back into place, right where it belonged. Damon lived in exactly the sort of spectacular condo in SOMA that I’d have imagined he’d live in, if I’d spent any time imagining his personal life might intersect with mine in any way that might allow me to find out.

  We took the key-operated elevator to the top floor. Damon was typing something into his phone and I resisted the urge to look at mine. I knew what it would show. More messages from Alexander, each more belligerent than the last the longer it took me to reply. Try never, I thought. Suggestive ones from Holly, probably speculating about Damon’s sexual prowess and various physical attributes. It would be worth whatever work email I missed and had to scramble to deal with over the weekend, I told myself, to avoid having Damon read any more too-revealing texts over my shoulder again in the same twenty-four hour period.

  He ushered me out of the elevator that opened directly into his loft, his phone still clenched in his hand. He lived in the penthouse of a glorious loft conversion, all glass and steel and artistically exposed beams, ringed with a wide balcony that let in the glittering city on all sides. Inside, the crisp white walls were relieved here and there with bold art and the living spaces that flowed lazily into each other were filled with masculine furnishings that managed to be both decidedly cool and somehow welcoming at once, a balance that should have been uneasy but instead felt perfectly suited to Damon.

  I walked down the wide steps that led into the sprawling main room, sure that the dramatic and colorful art on the walls, all angles and decisive lines, were some obvious modern masterpieces I should have recognized at a glance. But modern art all looked like squiggles to me. I’d long questioned what sort of people were really all that moved by it. People who were more concerned with the appearance of things that how they felt inside, was my theory.

  I opened my mouth to tell him so, but Damon was scowling at his phone again as he followed me down the steps. I decided to keep my mouth shut as I heard it buzzing, indicating he was actually getting a call at this late hour. He glanced at me, lifting a finger as he raised the phone to his ear.

  One minute, he mouthed.

  Then, into the phone in an annoyed voice, “What do you think I’m doing? It’s Friday night. I know you don’t have a life, but I do.”

  I didn’t want to eavesdrop—or I did, of course I did, but decided it was better to pretend I was the sort of person who would never dream of listening to other people’s conversations and then trying to piece together their lives from whatever one-sided bit of it I heard. I walked to the doors set into the great glass walls that functioned as windows, looking back over my shoulder at him as I did. Damon’s gaze was brooding as it met mine, but he nodded, and so I pushed my way out onto his balcony.

  San Francisco stretched out all around me, sparkling and gorgeous, the prettiest place I’d ever seen. It still made me feel as if I was flying, that I lived here now. That I’d done what only a few others in my graduating high school class had done and gotten out of Billings the way I’d always vowed I would. And I hadn’t just left, I’d excelled all the way here.

  I didn’t like the little voice that whispered dire things at me then. Asking me if I really wanted to risk all that for one night with a man. Did it matter that he was this man? Today was the most interaction I’d ever had with him at work, but all that meant was that the next time I was put on one of his cases, tonight would be hanging there between us. Unless, of course, he had me fired. Or worse, blackballed me so I’d wish he’d outright fired me instead.

  How could I risk my entire dream for my life for a single night?

  It was only m
y virginity. I really could go lose it in a bar bathroom if I wanted. I could swipe right on my phone and get it done with some vaguely attractive face on my way home from here, the bonus being, I’d never have to see random internet hook up guy again when I was done.

  I stared out at the city and willed myself to move. To turn around and walk out of here while I still could. To stop this insanity that had taken me over today before it wrecked the rest of my life.

  But I couldn’t seem to make my body obey my mind.

  I heard the door open again behind me and I turned then, to see Damon standing there in the wedge of light and glass. No phone in his hand, finally. The touch of his gaze was electric from across the width of the wide balcony, making the night seem to kick up sparks.

  Electric and yet as unsettled as I felt.

  I felt naked, then, and it wasn’t because he’d had his hands all over me. It was the way he was looking at me. It was what I was afraid he could see on my face. It was all those second thoughts inside of me jostling around and clamoring for release—and yet not one of them enough to make me walk away.

  “What the hell are you doing to me?” Damon asked softly. A little ferociously.

  I didn’t ask him to explain what he meant by that. I was pretty sure I knew. This was supposed to be light, easy. Fun. Wasn’t it? It wasn’t supposed to make me ache. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this, as if I’d been hollow all this time but had never realized it until he touched me. Until he’d tasted me.

  Until he’d made me understand I would never be whole unless I took this all the way. I’d never be able to live with myself if I left, no matter what happened next.

  Some things were worth risking everything for.

  But he was looking at me as if all he could feel was that greedy hollow inside him, the same way I could.

  So I took matters into my own hands.

  7.

  “You’re not getting attached, are you?” I asked.

  Damon straightened in the doorway. His face was in shadow but I could see the way his eyes glittered. “I beg your pardon?”

  “This happens.” I sighed. I hadn’t gone into the law by accident. Aside from the more noble and high-minded reasons, I knew I wasn’t a good enough actor to make a living on the stage. But I was definitely a good enough actor to deliver a convincing argument. Here as well as in front of a jury. I smiled at him. “It’s not your fault. Some men have that overdeveloped possessive trait. It makes them act a little caveman crazy about things like virginity. It’s like the people who taste soap when they eat cilantro. It can't be changed. It’s genetic.”

  There was an emphatically loud silence from Damon’s direction. He stepped farther out onto the balcony and let the glass door slam shut behind him, and I stood there and smiled as if he wasn’t dangerous to me in any way.

  “I don’t know which part of that astonishing little monologue to address first. And I like cilantro, for your information.”

  I waved a hand airily.

  “Listen, Damon, I get it. You’re used to depravity. I might as well be Amish in comparison.”

  “You’re about the furthest thing from Amish I can imagine.”

  But it was working. He didn’t look unsettled or hollow any longer. He looked as purely confident and devastatingly male as he had earlier tonight. My heart was thumping at me in response, and my pussy joined in, pulsing along to the same shuddery beat as he started toward me.

  I had to tilt my head back to keep holding his gaze, blue and ruthless as it was.

  “This is a one night thing,” I told him sternly, and I ignored the part of me that protested. That whispered what I already knew—that one night was never going to be enough. Not with him. But he didn’t have to tell me that wasn’t how things worked with him. He was Damon Patrick. I already knew how it worked. “We might be associates at the same firm, but all I know about you is what you do. We’re slightly acquainted strangers, that’s all.”

  “Are you sure about that?” He was still moving toward me with a certain intensity and focus that made everything inside me pull tight and burn hot. “I’m a fifth generation San Franciscan, for one thing. That makes us both rare, mythological creatures. A fifth generation San Franciscan native and a twenty six year old virgin. This is obviously destiny.”

  “That sounds a lot like attachment, which completely defeats the purpose of a one night stand, I think you’ll agree.”

  “I went to boarding school back East,” he continued. “And summer camp some five hours up the coast in Maine since the age of eight. My parents believe in as little contact with their children as possible and it makes us the happy family we are today. It gives us things to talk about over the holidays, since we’re complete strangers. I recommend it.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I’ve never met a stranger, Scottie.” That wasn’t quite amusement on his face. It was too dark. Too edgy. “I’m a friendly guy. And my life is an open, easily Google-able book.”

  “If I knew you better, maybe I’d be able to tell if that was sarcasm, but I don’t know you at all. So I’m going to go ahead and take that at face value.” I eyed him as he bore down on me. “Notice how I’m not telling you about my parents’ acrimonious divorce or the broken home I was raised in far off in the wilds of Montana. Why? Because that’s not appropriate for a one night stand. You already know too much about me as is.”

  “An ex told me my only form of human connection is sex. That makes me tragic, apparently, but also really, really good at it. Just FYI.”

  “Did she tell you this while you were together or when she was already an ex? Because each would have a different interpretation, obviously. Context matters.”

  “Oh no,” he said, stopping in front of me at last. “I think I’m a tragedy.” But he grinned at me as he said it. “Set down on this earth to fuck my way free of my terrible, soul-crushing loneliness. That was the diagnosis.”

  “I don’t actually have to know you to know that’s deeply sarcastic.” I tilted my head back even further, aware that he was taller than me and that he would be even taller when I wasn’t wearing four inch heels. Something that shouldn’t have made me feel something a lot like swoony. “Or that you shouldn’t take the psychological assessment of an ex to heart. Don’t worry, Damon. I don’t think you’re all that lonely.”

  “That almost sounds like a personal observation.”

  “The point is that it doesn’t matter. You’re going to perform a simple task for me. Like a plumber. If you’re lucky, I’ll leave you a Yelp review.”

  “A plumber,” he repeated, his voice as edgy as it was astonished. “Yelp.”

  He was standing in front of me, all gorgeously offended male and glittering dark blue eyes, and I knew that the storm had passed. That whatever that hollowness was that yawned wide in both of us, I’d pushed us through it. That this was still going to happen, and it would still be worth it, and I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of my life regretting the things that didn’t happen between us tonight.

  Thank God.

  I studied his expression as if I was looking for cracks. As if he’d broken down in front of me and I was trying to soothe him out of a crying jag. His dark brows rose in disbelief.

  “Do you think you can handle that, Damon? One night, no strings. Just sex.”

  This time, the laugh he let out ignited something deep inside of me. This time, it rolled over every inch of my skin and left me too hot and too weak to do anything but sink into it. I didn’t mind the sensation at all.

  “I think I can handle it,” he assured me.

  And then he bent, put his shoulder to my belly, and hoisted me up into the air so that I dangled over him.

  My own breath deserted me in a rush, half laughter and half shriek. Damon ignored it. He simply wheeled around and strode back inside with one hand holding me tight to his shoulder, somehow managing to walk in through the door without bashing my head into the wall. His beautiful condo w
as a swirl of luxury around us as he moved through the main space, carrying me across the whole floor until he pushed through a door on the far side.

  Then he tossed me through the air, and I laughed as I landed in a heap in the center of a very large bed on a raised platform. I looked up and there was only Damon, a wall of windows behind him, and the bright, magical city all around him.

  He didn’t turn on any lamps. He let San Francisco light up the room from the other side of all that glass, gleaming gold and gorgeous in the September night.

  And then he started taking off his clothes.

  “What are you doing?” There was nothing airy or convincing about my tone any longer. I sounded as if I hadn’t taken a deep breath in months. I felt as if I might never breathe again.

  His dress shirt was already on the floor. He toed off his shoes and put his hands on his belt.

  “Plumbing, Scottie,” he said, low and dangerous enough to make every hair on my body stand on end. And maybe dance a little bit, too, in delicious anticipation. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “Of course it is.” I made myself say it as brightly as humanly possible, as if I’d believed everything I’d said to him out on the balcony when I already knew this was going to scar me. But that was okay. Some scars were worth it. “Let’s get this done!”

  I matched my feigned and hearty enthusiasm with action, despite the fact I felt nothing but fizzy and fluttery from the inside out. I kicked off my shoes and heard them thunk against the floor. I shrugged out of my jacket and then stripped my camisole up and over my head before I could think better of it. I reached around and unzipped my skirt, then started to shimmy it down over my hips.

  But that was when I realized he was watching me. Intently.

  Wearing nothing but a pair of boxer briefs that made me feel remarkably religious, all of a sudden. Glory hallelujah, etcetera.

  Clothed, Damon Patrick was a work of art. A fantasy made flesh.

  The actual flesh, though? That was a whole other thing. He was carved to mouthwatering perfection. Lean and cut and something far better than simply stunning. He exuded sex and power from every pore and I thought I might die if I didn’t get my hands on him.