“Maybe you can put that in your book with Danny boy. Maybe you can even turn me into a monster defending a monster.”
“No,” I breathe out, hit hard by those words, and I don’t even know why. “I don’t think you’re a monster.”
“But you need to sell books. However you can sell them, right?”
“That’s not who I am. I know you know that.”
His voice softens ever so slightly. “I barely know you, Cat.”
“Then don’t judge me. My publisher set this up, and—”
“You should have warned me.”
“This is my job. We aren’t dating.”
“Right. Just fucking. No. Wrong. We aren’t even fucking. We were waiting while you milked me for more than an orgasm. And now I know where I went wrong with you. The minute I heard you were a reporter, I should have pulled your skirt up and had my one and done, and got you the fuck out of my system.”
“Stop being an asshole.”
“It’s who I am, per you.”
“You’re reading this all wrong, and you’re—”
“I don’t want more information,” he bites out. “Let’s keep this simple but not sweet. Hard and fast. Hard and long. As long as it ends. I’m in. If you want to fuck. Let’s fuck.”
“You ruined the joy of that little adventure.”
“Fine,” he says. “If you change your mind, if you want your one and done, call me. Otherwise, don’t.” He turns and walks away, leaving me on the sidewalk, staring after him as he re-enters the building.
I take a step to follow him and quite possibly punch him, but several high-profile lawyers walk into the hotel behind him. And I amend my earlier statement. Meeting here wasn’t stupid. I have nothing to hide with Dan. With Reese, it’s different. We’re one big, combustible ball of angry, sex-driven tension that’s hard to miss if you’re in the same room with us.
Rotating, I start an angry walk toward my apartment, and with every step I take, that anger vibrates through me. Being pissed off morphs into images of my ex screwing his secretary and a playlist of his lies. Reese didn’t deny being burned. He didn’t deny that it was driving his reactions to me now. Damn it, I’ve seen beneath the asshole. It’s a wall. I get it. I have my own. My anger plummets.
I make it one block and I dial Reese’s number. He doesn’t answer. I walk another block and try again. He doesn’t answer. I start getting angry all over again. This emotional rollercoaster and attempts to contact him repeat for seven blocks until I stop walking. At which point I realize that he must think that I’m actually calling for sex. Now he’s toying with me the way he thinks I’ve toyed with him.
I turn around and start walking back toward him.
This ends tonight, one way or the other.
If she calls and suddenly wants to fuck right now, I’m right about her. She’s a fame-grubbing bitch.
Those were my thoughts when I left her outside the hotel and rejoined my legal team. Elsa, who is strong-willed, and Richard, who will never be strong-willed enough for lead in a case like this one, but makes up for it with his genius. Tonight, though, both are worried, fretting over the client they too believe to be innocent. “Focus on what we can affect,” I say, and in the next fifteen minutes, we review what that means, while Cat calls me three times, leaving no messages.
I don’t answer. She’s obviously freaking out. She wants to fuck. She wants to work herself back inside the story with me. Every second that passes, I get more pissed. I don’t let anyone trigger my anger, but Cat has me churning anger like it’s fuel. I’m also at my wits end with Elsa, who is rehashing the day over and over.
“Focus on what we can affect,” I repeat. “The future we can control. Ideally, you two find me the real killer by the time we get there.” They gape at my massive demand, but I’ve learned that you don’t get anything you don’t ask for. Maybe that’s my problem with Cat. Until tonight, I never outright said, let’s fuck. I never outright pushed her to get naked with me, and I know from that kiss that I could have. But I wasn’t all about one and done, for once, but then neither was she, no matter what she claimed. That wouldn’t have worked out for her.
I offer my credit card to the waitress, and glance between Richard and Elsa. “Go get some sleep. We’ll meet at my apartment at noon tomorrow and we’ll stay there until Monday morning, if that’s what it takes to find our confession.” I glance at Elsa. “Get that private eye we hired to meet us there.”
“He sucks, Reese,” she says. “What’s the point?”
“I have to agree,” Richard states. “We’re on our own. I have a tech bud who can hack—”
“No,” I say. “Illegal activity does not make for legal evidence. I’ll make some phone calls. Both of you leave now. Go home. Do what you do to rest, because it’s the last rest you’ll get until this is over.”
They both stand up and murmur their goodbyes, while my phone rings with yet another call from Cat. Her desperation just fucking pisses me off. I had to work for it until now. Now she has to work for it. Proof I never had to work for it at all. You were burned, she’d said. Damn straight I was. By her. Before her. I should never have let her get under my skin. Maybe I won’t fuck her. She’s a damn witch who makes me stupid drunk.
My phone starts ringing again, and I decline Cat’s call and dial Royce Walker, who, of course, is married to Cat’s friend, Lauren. Because I can’t fucking escape Cat right now. “Royce.” I greet.
“I’m not taking on your client,” he says.
“Hello to you too, asshole. He’s innocent.”
“I don’t care,” Royce says, but he gives a heavy sigh. “But my wife does. She’s pregnant and obsessed with this case. And emotional about the victim, who was pregnant as well. She thinks a killer is on the loose.”
“She’s right.”
“Who did it?”
“I know who I think did it, but I have to prove it and force a confession by Monday or face a jury decision. And once my client is convicted, you know how hard it will be to get real justice.”
“By Monday,” Royce says. “That’s a tall order.”
“My client is a very rich man,” I remind him. “He can pay for a tall order.”
“Why come to me now rather than sooner?”
“The judge outright told me that I need a confession to shut this down or this rests in the jury’s hands. My client didn’t do this. I would stake my career on it.”
“You have,” he says. “Which is why you should have hired me for this, not a protective detail, a long time ago. Hell. If you were paying, and not your billionaire client, I wouldn’t make you pay. I want the person who killed that woman and unborn child to be caught.”
“Which is why I took the case. If he goes down, the real killer goes free.”
“Agreed,” Royce says. “And I make no promises ever, most definitely not this late in the game. But my team is the best. If there is a hole to find, a killer to catch, time is our only holdback. I’ll be in touch by Sunday night.”
He hangs up. The waitress sets my bill beside me. I sign the receipt, and I’m about to stand up when suddenly Cat is sitting across from me. Her cheeks are flushed, her lips glossy pink. “I’m sure you thought all those phone calls were me saying, ‘Yes. Let’s fuck.’”
“Weren’t they?”
“No. No, I was not. But the idea that you would think that, was driving me nuts. So I’m here to say what I had to say on the phone, because you wouldn’t answer.”
“I told you not to call unless it was to fuck. So this conversation is over.”
Her lashes lower, hiding whatever reaction I’ve just created. “Right,” she says, inhaling and exhaling as she looks at me again. “Right. Coming here was as stupid as me convincing myself that you weren’t the person you showed yourself to be the day we met.” And with that, she gets up and starts walking. And fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. I can’t let her go.
I push to my feet and follow her, my damn eyes on
her hot little ass in that pink dress. She weaves through the crunch of bar bodies, and I step up my pace, catching up with her just inside the hotel lobby, grasping her arm. She whirls around, jerking out of my grip to face off with me. “I hope,” she bites out, her voice low, but fierce, “for the sake of your client, that the jury doesn’t judge your client the way you have me, without facts and evidence.”
I close the space she’s put between us. “I know what I heard.”
Her hands go to her hips, her stance that of challenge, not defense. “You know what you think you heard.”
“You said yourself that your publisher set the book deal up for you with Dan.”
“My publisher forced the meeting on me.”
“I might not know you well,” I bite out, “but I know you have enough money and freedom not to be forced into anything.”
“I inherited my apartment, and I don’t live on family money. I have goals. I have dreams, and, frankly, it costs me money, a lot of money, to dare to live those things.”
“And your goals and dreams, I assume at this point, include writing a book and making bank by screwing me over.”
“Do you think that I would rip on Dan’s handling of the case, and praise you, if I ever intended to have that meeting with him tonight? Let alone write a book with the man?”
“And yet you took the meeting, Cat,” I say, not even sure why I’m still standing here with her. Why I care how she answers, I don’t know, but I do.
“Laying groundwork for the moment I declined an offer made by my present-day publisher, which is much like you walking away from a client mid-trial. It’s a big deal. But you know what? I don’t even care about the book anymore. I just want the respect of my readers following this case through my eyes and thoughts. Which means I shouldn’t be standing here with you right now, probably making a scene. I hate scenes.” She walks away.
I catch her arm again and guide her deeper into the lobby, toward the security booth. “Where are we going?” she demands.
“Someplace where you avoid your scene and I get my answers,” I say, giving the security guard a nod, and turning us down a hallway toward the private elevators I know well.
“I’ll leave,” Cat says. “Then there is no scene to avoid. And I’ve told you everything I have to tell. Stop walking. Reese, damn it, stop walking. There’s no one in this hallway anyway.”
“Not yet,” I say. “Not until I get us out of the eyes of the courtroom crowd.”
“Let go of my arm.”
I stop at the elevator bank and hit the button. “I’m not letting you go,” I say, walking her to stand in front of me as I step into her. “Not yet,” I add, the warmth of her body radiating into mine. “You haven’t told me everything you have to tell.”
“Just because you haven’t heard anything to justify your attitude, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t told you everything.”
“Have you, Cat?”
“Have I what?”
“Told me the truth?”
“Yes,” she says. “I have.”
“Make me believe it.”
“I don’t have to make you believe anything,” she says, her voice a little lower, a little raspier. The air between us is thicker, harder to breathe in, but then all I want to inhale right now is her sweet floral scent.
“But you want to,” I say.
“Yes,” she dares to admit. “I do. And I hate that I do. I shouldn’t care, because you’re—”
“I’m not an arrogant asshole.”
She studies me a moment, and I can feel a subtle softening of her body, see a warming in her eyes as she says, “Make me believe it,” and with that statement, she lets me know that she’s in this with me. That she still wants her one and done.
My lips curve and my cock hardens, pressing against my zipper when I want it pressing between her thighs. Holy hell. I’ve wanted those thighs wrapped around me from the moment this woman pissed me the fuck off in the coffee shop. It made no sense then. Nothing with this woman does, but it doesn’t have to. One and done.
The elevator dings and I hold on to her. I don’t want to let her go. I want to take her upstairs, when that is not a place I welcome women, not ever. And yet I brought her to this elevator. It’s a realization that has me releasing her arm, and not because I’ve changed my mind about my one and done. But because I want the control this woman has taken from me. She doesn’t get to hide behind my choices and my decisions.
“Come upstairs with me,” I say, and while the words are not a question, I back away and lean against the inner frame of the elevator, holding the door open, forcing her to make the next move. To change the dynamic with her actions. She stares at the car, not at me, seconds ticking by before her gaze finds mine, her green stare piercing. I arch a brow in question.
“What’s upstairs?”
“The top floors are residential. I own an apartment here.”
She laughs without humor. “I had a meeting with Dan in your building.”
“Yes. You did. And for the record, he knows I live here.”
“You thought I knew.” She doesn’t give me time to respond. “You thought—I didn’t know.”
I want to believe her. Too fucking much. I want to fuck her. Too fucking much. “Come upstairs with me, Cat.”
She answers by walking to me and joining me in the doorway, but she doesn’t touch me. She tilts her delicate little chin up, but there is nothing delicate about her will when her eyes once again meet mine, as she says, “I did not plot against you. I did not ever plan to write a book with Dan. I do, however, regret not texting you about this meeting, when you don’t deserve that regret right now. And I meant what I said. I really am going to bow out of this book deal. If you really don’t believe those things, I need to go home.”
“Why does it matter what I believe if we’re just fucking?”
“Because you just told me to make you believe it, and that is a clear statement that you are fucking me just to prove to me and you that I can’t hurt you. I have no impact on your life whatsoever. I’m just a fuck. And that’s fine. I’m just a fuck and so are you to me, but that’s supposed to equal an escape that feels good.”
My hands go to her waist, and I walk her into me, her legs now pressed to mine, her hands forced to rest on my chest, where I want them willingly. “Sweetheart,” I say, “I promise you that I’m going to make every lick, kiss, and touch as good as the moment before you orgasm.”
“I don’t doubt that you’ll make me feel good in the moment, Reese. I don’t doubt that this will make you feel like you won in some way I don’t fully understand. And I think you might enjoy that feeling in the morning. I don’t think I will. And not only does that defeat the entire premise of a one night stand, but I just talked myself out of this.” She presses against my chest and tries to move away. I don’t even think about letting her go. I don’t just want her. I crave this woman.
Voices sound in the near distance, and I react instantly, not about to create a moment that embarrasses Cat or loses her. “I was an asshole,” I say, and my hands come down on her hips. “I judged you.” I maneuver her into the elevator and into the corner. I punch in my code to the elevator and focus on what matters. Cat. My hands go to her face. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“You were an asshole.”
“I’ll make it up to you,” I repeat, pressing my cheek to hers, my lips at her ear, as I say, “I promise you, sweetheart, that every kiss, every touch, every lick, will be as good as the moment before your next orgasm.”
Her fingers curl around my lapels, and I can feel the subtle softening of her body as she replies with a raspy, “Does that promise include the words ‘I’m sorry’?”
I ease back to look at her. “I’ll say I’m sorry, Ms. Manners,” I assure her, “if you’ll say please.”
“You have a reason to say I’m sorry,” she counters. “You haven’t given me a reason to say please.”
And there it is. Yet another challe
nge by this woman that stirs ten levels of heat in my blood. The elevator dings and the doors begin to open. I lace my fingers with hers and tug her against me. “You do know that you can’t issue a challenge like that one to a man, and not give him a chance to make good on it, don’t you?”
“I’ll stay, but you do know that ‘please’ is a word that, when used in this particular context, has performance implications, I assume?”
I laugh, and my cock twitches. “We’ll let your manners decide my performance.”
“I guess we will,” she says, and it’s officially game time: The kind where she’s naked and eventually I will be, too. After she says please.
Time and mistakes have taught me that success and winning don’t equal control, as my father and my two of my three brothers would have me believe. Making your own choices is what gives you control. Owning those decisions, and your own happiness, your own pleasure: That is control.
As Reese and I walk down the long hallway to his apartment, and he pulls me close with his big, powerful arm, I’m aware of where we’re headed. I know that the warmth pooling in my belly and the heaviness in my breasts is a prelude not just to sex, but to me willingly allowing him the kind of control that enables him to make me say please. That’s my decision. That’s me owning my pleasure. And despite Reese being everything I don’t want in a man: Arrogant, rich, and powerful, and too good looking to live amongst us real humans, somehow he is exactly what I need. I don’t analyze why. I don’t have to understand.
It’s one night.
And that is what I want. It’s freedom from inhibitions and complications, and yet as we draw to a halt at his apartment door, and I watch him unlock it, nerves flutter in my belly. I never get nervous with men. Not since law school, when winning mock-courtroom battles had meant finding a comfort level in my own skin and on my own. The problem is perhaps that I’ve let Reese get too far under my skin as well. I know him. I’ve talked to him. I’ve enjoyed engaging conversations. I’ve looked forward to our little encounters and exchanges. And since I’m still talking to myself in my head, I tell myself that all of that was just foreplay, the lead-in to a good show. Nothing more.
Dirty Rich One Night Stand: a sexy standalone novel Page 6
