by Julie Leto
“Okay,” she replied.
He pushed her back so he could look fully at her face, but he didn’t let her go. “Okay? What does that mean, okay?”
She took off her glasses, folded them purposefully and tucked them into her cleavage. She combed her hair with her fingers and watched his nostrils flare as the scent of her shampoo teased the air.
He was being sincere. If she couldn’t tell by the dilation of his pupils inside those heart-melting baby blues, she could tell by the increasing hardness pressed against her stomach.
“It means,” she said, twisting out of his hold so that she could remove her hotel key card from her pocket, “after we’re done here, why don’t we move this conversation to my room?”
Chapter 4
After about ten times of trying to unfold his guitar stand and shove it into the insulated case designated for its storage, Shaw cursed as if someone had just murdered his best friend. The band, none of whom had any idea about the hotel key card burning a three by two inch patch of pain in his pocket, kicked him off the stage and told him to go home.
Only he wasn’t going home…he was heading to paradise.
Seconds after Kate had given him the key to her room, Erica had ended her speech. And Shaw? He’d stopped breathing. His eyes had locked with Kate’s and in those hypnotic green depths, he saw something that he hadn’t witnessed since the night someone had drugged her drink.
She wanted him.
Her need was unfurled and unmistakable…and this time, it was without any pharmaceutical influence.
When Erica had summoned him back to the stage, he’d pulled enough air into his lungs to finish the last set. He’d flubbed the lyrics on two songs, but pulled himself together by the finale, a hard-rocking cover of Nickelback’s “How You Remind Me.”
Which hammered home the question: when was he going to tell her about the night she couldn’t recall? Before they made love or after?
He jogged to his room, showered, shaved, threw on a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt and still had no answer. He stepped into the elevator, still trying to make a choice, when he realized he didn’t know what floor to press.
But efficient as always, Kate had scrawled her room number on the card with a Sharpie. He spent the time between floors trying to rub the number off with his thumb, unable to make up his mind, but certain that if the card got misplaced, he didn’t want anyone else having access to her room.
Or to her. She was his—finally—for the taking. But he had to play this right. One wrong word when describing the night he’d taken her home and resisted her drug-induced demands that he have sex with her and she’d never talk to him again.
She had every reason to be angry, confused and humiliated. He could assure her that he’d had nothing to do with the roofie, had rescued her from some creep with control issues and that they hadn’t done anything she should be ashamed of—but that didn’t mean she would believe him. For the past year, he’d been trying to win her over, but his attempts at being funny and charming and non-threatening had fallen on stubborn ears.
Now, suddenly, without warning, she’d changed her mind. It was as if he’d signed up to play a gig at a Jazzfest and long after the sound check, the organizers asked him to play Mozart. He could do it…but not easily and probably not very well.
When he reached Kate’s door, he decided to play the night by ear. Flying by the seat of his pants had served him well for twenty-eight years. Why change now?
He knocked, thinking it weird to walk in even if he did have a key. A full minute passed and she didn’t answer. Had she changed her mind? His hand quaking with raw nerves, he slid the key into the lock, waited for the tiny green light and then entered.
He hesitated just inside the door. The lights in her room were off, but as his eyes adjusted, he saw her on the balcony, the pink-tinged outdoor lights giving her an otherworldly glow. She was wearing a silky gown that draped over her curves in ways that might have left little to the imagination of a less imaginative man.
He exhaled, standing stock still until she tilted her face so that he caught her sensual expression in profile. Her hair was lustrous. Her lips were stained in a bold color that enhanced the creamy paleness of her skin. He was mildly aware of a sultry tune playing somewhere in the background. As a musician, he appreciated her theatricality. He suddenly felt as if he should toss his fedora on the bed and mix a martini before he joined her outside.
Luckily, he had neither fedora nor gin, so he had nothing to slow him down.
Once he crossed over the threshold of the open sliding glass door, the heat hit him from both the inside and the out.
“It’s warm tonight,” he said.
“Sweltering,” she agreed.
He had no idea what she was wearing, but the gown ought to have been illegal. The neckline plunged. The fabric was so thin, the dark outline of her areola shimmered through the silk. Her nipples weren’t yet peaked, but he trusted that once he’d done what he’d come here to do, he’d be able to test their texture, maybe even through the material, if it didn’t disintegrate from the moisture of his tongue.
“Nice dress,” he said.
“It’s actually a night gown. I found it at a vintage shop,” she said, treating him to a slow, sensual twirl that revealed the presence of two thigh-high slits. “They don’t make clothes like this any more.”
Though his tongue had thickened in his parched mouth, he managed to say, “A damned shame. You look beautiful, Kate.”
Her lashes fluttered down shyly, but Shaw wasn’t fooled. She’d planned every aspect of this seduction from her costume to the soundtrack to her coy demeanor. This was the advantage of falling for a woman who was a little older and clearly, a hell of a lot wiser. Once she decided to go for what she wanted, she knew precisely how to turn up the heat.
Kate didn’t want a run-of-the-mill hook-up. No matter what might have happened to her over a year ago, she wasn’t the type to dream about nameless, emotionless fucks. She wanted the fantasy, the romance, the seduction. She’d told him so that night—that night he wasn’t about to mention now.
This was precisely what she’d pined for…sexy clothes, haunting music and a willing lover with no other agenda but fulfilling her every sensual need. With the same skill she used to plan parties, Kate had orchestrated a perfect seduction and he was the scheduled entertainment.
Luckily for both of them, he couldn’t wait to start playing.
Chapter 5
Kate led him back into the room. He didn’t need to know that she owned a half-dozen of these type of nightgowns, courtesy of her obsession with vintage lingerie. She’d tossed one into her suitcase for the weekend not because she’d planned to seduce him, but because doing so was as ordinary as packing her hairbrush.
But beyond that, nothing about tonight was normal. Even in the old days when she used to go home with whatever hot musician or artist had caught her eye for the night, she’d never turned the opportunity into a love scene straight off a black and white movie screen.
Was it clichéd? Maybe. Did she care? No. If she was going to throw caution to the wind and seduce Shaw Tyler into her bed, what better way than in a femme fatale fairytale?
“Want a drink?” she asked, running her fingers down the sweating neck of the champagne she’d ordered up from room service.
“Not of bubbly,” he replied.
She turned and reclined across the bed. Though she hadn’t had a chance in a long time, Kate knew how to be sexy, how to make a man crazy with lust, how to get what she wanted and give the same in return. Judging by the swiftness with which Shaw crawled next to her, she hadn’t lost her touch.
“What do you want then?” she asked.
“You.”
His kiss was tender, tentative, not at all what she’d expected from a man who made his living in leather pants. She imagined he’d make love as fast and furiously as he worked a stage, but instead, he took his sweet time, nipping at the corners of her mouth,
suckling softly on her bottom lip, all the time cupping her cheeks as if her face was crafted from porcelain. When he finally tangled his tongue with hers, he led her in a slow, swaying dance better suited to the music played at a symphony rather than a rock concert.
Not that she minded. His sensual pace intensified each touch, enhanced each taste. He dropped his mouth to the pulse point of her neck, brushing his lips over the sensitive skin as his fingers explored, tracing her ear, her chin, her neck, then lower, until a single fingertip outlined the curves and dips of her bodice, but never breached the fabric.
He didn’t need to. Through the paper-thin silk, her nerve endings exploded in slow succession. He sketched around her nipples. Pop. He tightened the circles with each concentric curve. Pop. Pop. By the time he bent his head and took her into his mouth through the silk, she nearly bucked off the bed from the sensory assault.
“Oh.” She entangled her fingers in his hair, tugging and pulling with the same gentle pressure as his mouth. “Oh, Shaw.”
She writhed beneath him, wishing he’d tear the gown aside. Instead, moisture saturated the material so that when he blew a warm breath over her, it was like he was licking her everywhere, all at once.
“Your breasts are perfect,” he said, cupping her, his thumbs grazing across her straining nipple.
“Not perfect,” she argued.
He flicked the straps off her shoulders. With slow reverence, he pealed the fabric from her skin, then caressed the full curve of her, first on the right side, then the left, worshipping her with his palms, his eyes, and then, finally, his lips.
“Perfect,” he murmured.
She squeaked as he tightened his teeth on her and then repeated, “Yes, perfect.”
Perfect was the pressure he exerted, just enough to invoke a series of coos from deep within and send a wash of pleasured heat straight to her sex. He followed the heat blazing through her bloodstream as he dragged his hands down her side, across her belly, then lower.
Into the slit of her gown. Beyond the tangle of curls into her sweet center.
“So wet,” he murmured.
She wiggled her backside, inching up the material of her gown so she could open wider to his touch.
“Yes,” she said, moaning as he traced the curves of her labia. “Oh, yes.”
“Where should I touch you first? Here? “ he asked, sliding a finger deep inside until she gasped, then withdrawing. “Or here?”
He pressed her clit and she arched, gasping at the explosion of need spiking through her blood stream.
He touched and toggled, then buried his finger deep within her again.
She shook her head. She couldn’t choose. She wanted both. She wanted him. She wanted to do exactly what she was doing now—allow him full access to ply his magic.
He didn’t disappoint her. He alternated between the two, sending her into a maelstrom of sensation. He whispered a thousand sweet compliments, each made nonsensical by the blood rushing in her ears. She picked up snippets. Something about loving how hot she was. Maybe something about wanting to feel her come at least twice before he took any pleasure for himself.
She was only vaguely aware of the gravity of that vow when he kissed a sweet path down her inner thigh. Without hesitation, she lifted her knees. He tucked his shoulders underneath her thighs, ran his smooth cheek against her sensitive skin, then blew out a hot breath across her hungry flesh, elevating her madness to near insanity.
It was as if he could read her mind—as if he’d read a page from her unwritten sexual diary. He knew what she liked, what she wanted, what she dreamed about. He curled back the lips of her sex and blew again, this time concentrating a stream of air where she was hottest and wettest. When she cried out with pleasure, he dropped his mouth on her.
The sensations threw her into instant delirium. He took his time, tasting every inch of her, leaving no crevice unexplored. By the time he concentrated his tongue on her clit and slid two fingers deep inside her, she no longer had any sense of who she was or why she was here. She was nothing more than an exposed nerve ending, desperate for the sensations he pumped into her.
“Yea, sweetheart,” he coaxed. “That’s it. Come on. You’re nearly there.”
He increased the tempo and she cried out as she crested, then fell. In the aftermath, he pressed his face to her thigh, his own breathing labored as she came back to earth.
And then, suddenly, he was straightening her clothes, tugging down the hem and adjusting the straps so that the lingerie reached her ankles and covered her breasts. He rolled off the bed, back to her, and slammed his hands through his hair with such force, she imagined he’d torn out some of the strands.
“Shaw?”
He spun around, looked at her for a split-second, then held out his hands as if to ward her off.
She sat up on her elbows. “What? What’s wrong?”
“I can’t do this,” he muttered.
She remained stunned for a full minute before she mustered the strength to slide her legs off the bed and stand. Her knees protested, but obeyed.
“Can’t do what?”
Up close, she could see anguish carved into every aspect of his face.
She took a step back, suddenly enveloped in fear. She’d risked so much to be with him tonight—her pride, her professional position, her heart. Was he throwing this back at her somehow? Rejecting her after giving her the best oral sex she’d ever had?
“Shaw? I don’t understand what’s happening.”
He took a deep breath, exhaled, then turned his hands, not to touch her, but in surrender. “I have to tell you something, Kate. About the night we first met.”
Kate looked away, wracking her brain for the time and place of the first time they’d been introduced. It couldn’t have been anything significant. A party? A business meeting at the office?
“A fundraiser for a city council candidate at a club on Division Street,” she said.
Even before she finished the sentence, Shaw was shaking his head.
“No, Kate. That’s the first time you remember meeting me. But our worlds collided a couple of months before that. The night you can’t remember.”
The muscles in her chest clenched tight. “How do you know about that?”
“Because I was there. With you. All night long.”
Chapter 6
Though Shaw knew it might be a mistake, he couldn’t help but grab Kate by the elbows when it looked like she might fall. She instantly tugged out of his hold and lowered herself onto the edge of the bed.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
He muttered a curse, disbelieving how massively he’d screwed up. He should have told her the truth before things went so far, but the allure of her seduction had been too powerful for him to resist—especially after how much he’d resisted that night she couldn’t recall. But after tasting and inhaling and experiencing the full breadth of her climax, he’d known that his world would remain in turmoil until he came clean.
“I want to be with you, Kate,” he confessed.
She shook her head, as if trying to clear away her confusion. “Isn’t that what we were aiming for?”
“Like an arrow,” Shaw said. “And I swear to God, I want it—I want you—more than anything. But there’s a lie in our way. Actually, not a lie. A truth. A truth I haven’t told about what happened that night.”
“No one knows what happened to me,” she said. “I asked around. No one even remembers seeing me. I was at the club and then, I wasn’t. I ended up at home, in bed, alone.”
He dropped to his knee, needing her to see his face. “That’s because I took you home.”
“You? You didn’t even know me then.”
“I knew you were in trouble.”
She snorted, but couldn’t meet his eyes. Her confidence was cracked—thanks to him.
“I can take care of myself,” she insisted.
“You couldn’t that night, Kate. You were vulnerable. Maybe more vulne
rable than you’ve been in your entire life.”
Her chin notched upward. “I was an attorney, a junior partner in a major law firm. Very good at my job and very well respected.”
“And very unhappy.”
She narrowed her gaze. With every secret he revealed, her anger increased. He couldn’t blame her. While under the influence, she’d confessed secrets about her life, her career and her most intimate sexual preferences—secrets only an intimate friend or lover would know—secrets he could keep to himself no longer.
“How do you know about my job? Did Erica tell you?”
“No,” he replied. “She didn’t need to. You told me yourself. How bored you were in the corporate world. How you hit the clubs, desperate for some fun after feeling like a caged bird all day. You told me how you went into law to please your parents and your friends, but that you hated being cooped up. You wanted a job where you could be creative and maybe a little wild. You told me everything, Kate.”
With each admission, she leaned another inch away from him. “I wouldn’t.”
Shaw cradled his pounding head while he wondered what to say next. Except under the influence of drugs, Kate wasn’t chatty about her personal life. But that night, she’d talked for hours. She’d gifted him with her life story, from growing up as an only child to type A personality parents to the time she’d seduced the lead singer of a well-known eighties hair band.
“Under normal circumstances, you’d never tell a stranger so much. But the circumstances weren’t normal, Kate. My band was on stage. You were in the front row. I couldn’t take my eyes off you. For one heartbeat, we connected. Then some guy, I don’t think you knew him, slipped something into your drink.”
The color drained from her face. “I was drugged?”
He inched closer, his hands aching to take her palms in his. “Yeah.”
She faced him dead on. “You’re sure?”
He nodded.
“And you’ve known this for over a year?”
The snap in her voice cut straight through the center of his chest. “Yes.”
