Drawn to Him: A Romance Collection

by Willow Winters

  I knew it then, looking into his eyes, that I was never going to be the same. That whatever I felt for him in my heart had changed me. I just didn’t know that it would take us so long to get to this place.

  “Ginger?”

  His face fills with worry, and he squeezes my hand in his, taking another breath to prepare a long-winded speech about all the things he’s going to do to make things right. He just doesn’t know that he already has.

  I grab his face in my hand and lean across the car. I kiss him, and it conveys everything that I need him to know.

  “Take me inside, Gray,” I tell him. “And don’t ever let me go again.”

  * * *

  The End.

  ONE NIGHT

  K.L. Kreig

  COPYRIGHT

  Copyright © 2017 by K.L. Kreig

  * * *

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author.

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  * * *

  Editing by Christine Estevez, CAE Services

  Published in the United States of America.

  PROLOGUE

  Saine ~ Then

  “O h shit, yes,” he moans in my ear. “You feel fucking amazing.”

  His short choppy breaths are heavy with lust and smell faintly of the Churchill cigars my father used to smoke. Eager hands dip into my valleys and slip over my shapely curves. They tweak my nipples and play with my oversensitive clit until I’m squirming. “Your skin…Christ, it smells like sins and trouble. So much goddamn trouble.”

  He hummed a version of this in my ear earlier at the bar when he stood behind me and brazenly pressed his erection into the small of my back. I was projecting pretty clear fuck-off vibes at the time, but somehow he managed to take them and twist them to meet his whims instead.

  It fascinated me since that’s not easy to do.

  I watched him watch me in the bar mirror, something about him I couldn’t ignore even though I tried to. Even though I wanted to. I sipped my drink and flippantly told him it was a store-brand honeysuckle and orange body wash. He said it was heady and made his mouth water for a taste.

  It was a cheesy, almost unimaginative line, but it drew the smallest of smiles from me. I didn’t think anything in that moment could make me smile. He then said I looked like I could use a friend. I told him my friend card was already too crowded. I meant it.

  I expected him to walk then, only he didn’t. He just stayed still and watched me, wetting his lips every so often as if he was tasting the very air around me and he liked it. Savored it. Couldn’t get enough of it.

  It was reckless and stupid to even think about going to a stranger’s hotel room, especially one who looked like him. Defined muscles that could bench three of me. An overgrown beard that obscured what I imagined was a handsome face. Shaggy hair pulled haphazardly into a messy man bun. It was sexy, I’ll admit. Very Chris Hemsworth-ish. But when I spun to tell him to find new prey, the abjectness in his coconut brown eyes—which he let briefly break through—stopped me short.

  I knew it because I lived in it. Had steeped in it for months now.

  He was mysterious and complex, but his need was simple and spoke volumes.

  Desperation loomed—only not for my heart or some other invisible piece of me to pilfer and crush—but for my body. For something fleeting, temporary. Carnal. He needed to lose himself in sweat and pleasure for a few short hours.

  What a coincidence.

  I told him I wasn’t looking for a future. He said mine hadn’t arrived yet so not to worry. I hesitated, torn between wanting what he was offering and wanting oblivion in the bottom of a Ketel One bottle.

  I finally asked him to buy me a drink. He quirked one brow and smirked this smirk that would raise my hackles under any other circumstance—a smug one that said gotcha—then proceeded to order me another vodka martini. He watched me drink it slowly, dark eyes attentive, mouth quiet, throat working.

  With an unspoken understanding between us that this was one night only the word no still balanced on the tip of my tongue. I didn’t need a roll in the hay that would turn complicated. I was already complicated enough. My mouth opened again to push the word out when something simple and innocuous sealed the deal.

  His eyes drifted to the diamond-encrusted pin I was wearing, a gift from my grandmother. They softened in sympathy but steeled with resolve. A contradiction, but so was he. Surprising me, he brought the tip of his finger to it and absently stroked. It was strangely intimate and ripe with reverence.

  “Some say a hummingbird represents a spirit sent to help those in need. What is it you need right now, beautiful one?”

  His question was only a whisper. The endearment was a throaty rasp that started at the base of my spine and worked its way through my blood until it hummed deliciously throughout my body. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t react but my heart raced as he pulled up the sleeve of his shirt to showcase an intricately sketched hummingbird inked on the inside of his bicep.

  It looked fresh, the skin still angry around the outline of the bird. On any other man it would have seemed out of place, a tattoo meant more for a female than a manly man such as him, but on him, it implored to tell a sad story I wasn’t sure I could handle just then.

  “Your room?” I found myself replying.

  So with a flirty grin, a full bottle of Moet & Chandon I could never afford, and all of fifty curt words exchanged between us, I accepted his invitation upstairs and we left the buzz of my cousin Alicia’s wedding twelve floors below for a buzz of an entirely different sort.

  “How does it taste,” I ask, panting, clawing at the sheets as he presses his thick length in and out in a swift rhythm that feels so fucking unbelievable it’s madness. Sheer blissful torture. “My skin,” I prompt, canting my ass upward on a groan. “Tell me how it tastes.”

  His lips sip the expanse of my neck. They suck, and his sharp teeth nip and scrape hard enough to mark me, as if I’m being punished for telling him what to do.

  “Like defiance and sunshine after a heavy summer downpour,” he rumbles.

  Oh wow, my bearded stranger is poetic. And in-freaking-credible in bed.

  “I bet that means your pussy tastes like the colors of the fucking rainbow.”

  In one second to the next, I’m flipped from my stomach to my back, and his head is buried between my splayed thighs. His dick isn’t the only talented part of his anatomy, I see. I palm my breasts and pinch my nipples as he works his magic.

  My head swims in too much vodka and an overload of pheromones he’s drugging me with. I’m getting ready to ask him if the colors of the rainbow are tangy or sweet when a shock of ice-cold liquid hits my mound and runs down my center, wetting the sheets beneath my ass.

  My body knifes up, but a firm hand on my stomach prevents me from moving any further. While I lever on my elbows, this wicked man, whose name I don’t even know, glances up at me with the devil in his eyes and sloth on his shiny lips.

  “Champagne.” He rumbles this on a dark chuckle before he snakes his tongue out to run the blunt tip over my swollen nub. “Your pussy tastes like two hundred dollar”—lick—“sparkling”—lick—“wine.” He pauses and grins. It’s kind of dazzling underneath all that hair. And blinding. A little too arresting. It’s disconcerting how much I want to see it again because this is a one-time deal.

  A current passes between us,
powerful and breath-stealing. It sticks in the air, pulsing, trying to dig into my chest cavity, kinking itself around my common sense until spots appear in my vision.

  He is simply magnetic. Irresistible. This could be the start of something if we let it. I know it. I feel it, the same as he does. But I don’t let it. I can’t. I have to cut it off before it roots, so I purr contentedly instead.

  If he’s disappointed, he doesn’t show it. He simply says, “It’s fucking delicious, like my very own pot of liquid gold.”

  “Maybe you should taste it again, just to be sure.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah.” I lift my hips in encouragement.

  Eyeing me with dark eyes it would be all too easy to drown in, he holds the bottle up high and, with damnation written all over his scruffy face, proceeds to drizzle the freezing contents into my belly button until it overflows. With those chocolate puddles of lucidity never leaving mine, he slurps it up and pours again and again.

  He showers me in pricey bubbly until it’s gone and I’ve had several mind-bending orgasms. Until every part of me has been deliciously tongued and the sheets are drenched.

  Then he really gets started. Crawling up my body with the grace of a panther, eyes glued to mine, he slides his wrapped dick, thick and pounding, slowly inside of me. He stretches my sensitive tissues, seating himself at the end of my womb. Using my long hair as leverage, he fucks me for hours until I pass out on top of him, raw and satiated and too numb to care anymore that my cousin—who is like a sister to me—just married my ex-fiancé.

  Between bouts of hot sex and much-needed rest, we talk and laugh. It’s easy and comfortable. Never too deep, though we connect on a level I don’t expect for a one-night stand. He puts me at ease, both physically and mentally. And when he surprises me by asking me to stay the night before he drifts off, I give him a mumbled yes, though I know my agreement is a lie.

  A repeat isn’t meant to happen. A blossoming relationship isn’t in the cards. If it were another place, another time, perhaps, it’s possible this could be the start of something fragile and precious.

  But it’s not. It’s here. It’s now. And I am still in love with someone else, though I’m a fool because he’s in love with another.

  No. This was simply a reprieve so I can breathe through my broken heart for a while without feeling the sharp pain of betrayal pinching my insides.

  I turn my head to admire him for a few more quiet minutes, trying to memorize everything about him, fighting the urge to stay. Before I think better of it or question why I want to explore where this could go, I slink out of bed and slip into my discarded, wrinkled bridesmaid gown that I’ll burn come morning. I grab my clutch and stuff it under my arm. I scoop up strappy heels from the floor, letting them dangle between my index and middle fingers. I snatch my bra and tuck it into my purse, throwing the ripped panties—one of my favorites—into the trashcan on my way to the door.

  Doorknob in hand, I breathe deep and give it a turn, cringing at the sliver of light blinding me from the hallway. Throwing one last glance back at the outsider who made the strangling loneliness disappear for a while, I make sure he’s still dead asleep.

  He is, and with an arm thrown over his forehead and the sheets low on his hips, he is handsome and somewhat less intimidating in slumber. He was gruff and direct. A rough lover, but still gentle in the ways a woman needs gentle.

  A twinge of guilt assaults me. I feel bad leaving without so much as a goodbye or a simple exchange of names or even a heartfelt thank you, but we both knew what this night was and what it wasn’t the moment he pinned me to the elevator’s steel wall and found my center wet and ready.

  I stand there for a long time, admiring him. He may not know it, he will certainly never understand it, but this man—this stranger—took me away from the pile of shit my life has become, even if it was only momentarily. He made me feel both cherished and used. He made me feel strong and weak. He made me feel alive. He made me feel, period. I haven’t felt for months. We were both equally greedy and selfish, and while I regret a lot of decisions in my life—this won’t be one of them because he gave me something tonight I didn’t think I’d ever have again.

  Hope.

  I feel as though it’s possible I could be whole again, someday, in no small part thanks to this man.

  With a softly and sincerely whispered “thank you,” I slide through a crack just big enough to fit my size twelve frame. I close the door without a sound, padding toward the elevator with my head held high.

  Though the desolation he’d managed to keep at bay returns with acidic vengeance with each step I take away from him, somehow I know I’ll never forget this night.

  Somehow I know I’ll never forget him, either, and that bothers me more than I care to understand or address right now.

  CHAPTER 1

  Saine ~ Now

  I peek through the slit in the curtain, eyes scanning the throng of bodies. I tell myself it’s to ensure we’ve pulled in another standing room only crowd but that’s a lie. I know we have. We always do. For six months, every time we take the stage at The Revelry it’s been a full house. In fact, I daresay it’s in part because of our band that this club has blazed back to life.

  So I’m not loitering to validate what I already know.

  He’s here.

  I haven’t seen him with my own eyes yet, but when all of the waitresses start giggling like schoolgirls, clustering together and whispering, I know he’s around. Besides, I heard Janie, the waitress who delivered our drinks earlier, titter on about the fact he’d be here tonight.

  I don’t want him here. I hate it when he comes, though he’s partial owner and he has more right to be here than I do.

  Still, it pisses me off.

  He breaks my focus. Rearranges my thoughts.

  He’s sex on steroids. Illegal and dangerous to my health.

  And I don’t even like him.

  In fact, I can’t stand his arrogant ass, fine as it may look in a pair of faded jeans that mold—

  Stop, Saine.

  “You look especially gorgeous tonight.” The air from my bandmate’s praise is warm and tickles my bare shoulder.

  “Thank you,” I whisper my reply, feeling anything but. I let the drape fall back into place and splay my hand over my poochy middle, wishing I’d remembered to suck it in with a layer of Spanx. I’m positive I feel vibrations of the anxiety inside battering my palm. Normally I don’t let nerves get the best of me, but whenever he’s here, I suddenly turn into a sickening version of the kind of woman I loathe.

  My eyelashes flutter a little too much.

  My heart picks up to a pace that makes me breathless and sound needy.

  The vibrato in my voice smooths out and drops low, turning sultrier in some sort of asinine mating call to him.

  I begin to fantasize, daydream.

  What would it be like to have his weight pin me to a scratchy sheet?

  How would he feel driving his length inside me over and over until I shatter around him?

  Would he be a gentle lover, pressing tender kisses and sweet compliments into my flesh or would he be hard-edged? Taxing my body, challenging my mind? Demeaning me as he makes me beg for more?

  Yes. That’s exactly how he would be. Tender and sweet aren’t adjectives that could be used to describe that cocky, vain, jack of all the asses. Because that’s exactly what Bennett Montgomery is.

  A conceited, egotistical, self-absorbed bastard who I hate with every fiber of my being.

  Forget how his angular face perpetually wears a dusting of day-old scruff, as if he’s a famous model and it’s his signature look he daren’t mess with.

  Or how his warm brown eyes resemble homemade chocolate brownies with melted caramel bits on top. Delicious, inviting, and impossibly irresistible.

  And his body? No…don’t even think about rigid lines and powerhouse thighs. Or bulges. Thick, long, orgasm inducing…

  No. No, no, no. Just
no.

  Jackass, jackass, jackass.

  Remember that, Saine.

  King of the Jackass’s.

  “How about you let me buy you a drink after our last set tonight?” That deep, dark voice falls on me again. Though we’re childhood friends, usually I can’t help but let it affect me in places a deliciously textured voice affects women. I am a woman, after all. Not tonight, though. Tonight that place is already humming in awareness for one man and one man only.

  Bennett fucking Montgomery.

  Dammit.

  I breathe in and turn around to face Fallen Legends’ bass-playing heartbreaker, Ian Riverdale. I crane my head back and meet stark blue eyes behind black-rimmed glasses that should make him appear nerdy but do the complete opposite. Soft lips I’ve had on mine are quirked to the sky, his intent clear.

  It’s been three months since I hopped into bed with my best friend on a whim. It was a mistake, one I would take back if I could. I wish I could say it was a result of being drunk. It wasn’t. I was buzzed, yes, but I knew exactly what I was doing.

  Loneliness is an abysmal feeling that sometimes drives a person to make ill-fated decisions. Ones they’ll often regret in the light of a new day. I’ve done that plenty of times over the years since my ex broke me. Sex isn’t scarce for me, but sex with someone who gives a shit about my feelings afterward is. But while Ian and I set the sheets on fire, that’s all it was. A physical release with the intimacy of a long-term friendship that I put a strain on.

  “I thought we said we wouldn’t let that happen again?”

  He crowds me. I don’t step back. His trimmed, dirty blond hair is finger-combed, making it stand on end. He’s sexy, he knows it, and his advance is tempting. So tempting. Maybe if I let him bang me until morning, I can forget the brooding asshole I know is waiting for me in the shadows of the club.