by Lexi Ryan
He laughs softly. “Yeah. I imagine.”
“I could, but I’m not. I’m eating lunch with you because you asked me. I didn’t come because I had to. I came because I wanted to.”
“And I guess that makes me the luckiest guy here.” His gaze drops to my mouth as he says it.
My insides turn to warm mush and my whole body gravitates toward him. I lick my lips, suddenly parched. “You said you were free tonight?”
Chapter Ten
Keegan
“Meet me here in fifteen minutes.” The blonde tucks a piece of paper into my hand and sinks her teeth into her red bottom lip. When she walks away, there’s a calculated sway in her hips. She knows I’m watching. Hell, she’s all surgically perfected curves and tanned skin in that hot pink dress. Most of the men at the bar have their eyes on her.
Next to me, Mason shakes his head and cocks a brow. “What just happened?”
I look at the piece of paper in my hand that tells me her room number. “I’m pretty sure the girl just invited him to her room,” Bailey says on the other side of me.
“Something like that,” I mutter.
Mason clears his throat. “Are you going to go?”
I make a face. “Are you fucking crazy? I know nothing about that woman.”
Bailey grunts. “Never stopped you before.”
I look at my watch. “Everyone’s going to be here in five minutes. We have plans, remember?”
Bailey shakes her head. “Suit yourself, but you know Chris and Grace and Mia and Arrow are upstairs getting off right this instant.” She steps between mine and Mason’s stools and drapes her arms over our shoulders. “Meanwhile, we three stooges are down here trying and failing to silence our libidos with alcohol.”
Mason ignores her, but the fact that he drains his bourbon tells me he’s more than aware of her touch. And his libido. I wonder what he thinks of the reminder of what they could be doing right now. I’d say I wish these two would fuck and get over it, but apparently they did a lot of that once. So much so that Mason assumed what he had with Bailey was going to become something much more serious than fucking. When Bailey wasn’t on board with that, he cut her off. Fast-forward three years, and Mason and I play on the same NFL team while Bailey is back home in Blackhawk Valley running my bar, leaving me the monkey in the middle of these two fools who can’t figure their shit out.
“Or maybe you’re saving yourself for…” Bailey studies me, cocking her head. “What was her name? Emily? Maybe that’s why you’re not taking the blonde up on her offer.”
“Oh, good point,” Mason says, and I think he might be a little buzzed. “I forgot about the hot new girl.”
“We’re friends,” I mutter. Lord knows that reminder didn’t do shit to keep my mind from locking on Emma while I was in the shower. Every thought that went through my brain was about her—memories of her body under mine, fantasies of taking her to my room tonight, undressing her, finding all her sweet spots and reminding her how good I can make her feel. I turned the water hot and let my mind run wild as I imagined, in vivid detail, the scenario that would end the night with her in my arms.
“Are you going to tell us how you know her?” Bailey asks. “And don’t give me that high school bullshit. You two were obviously more than classmates.”
“It’s a long story.”
Bailey says something in response, but I can’t focus on her words because Emma just walked into the lobby bar. My jaw falls open and I think I stop breathing.
Just friends. You’re spending your night together as friends.
The words might be true, but they don’t help my response to her. No man wants to be just friends with a woman who looks like that in a red dress. I slide off the stool and go to her, and I can feel my friends’ eyes on me but I don’t fucking care. The dress cradles her curves and shows off everything. It stops mid-thigh—sweet, soft thighs that I remember too well having wrapped around my waist.
“I didn’t even think about what I’d wear until I got out of the shower and realized this was my only option.” Her hand flutters to her chest, covering her cleavage. “Becky packed for me.”
“Remind me to thank her.” Stepping closer, I let my gaze skim over her again, from that stupid fucking wig that I might not mind if I didn’t have such a thing for her hair, to her shiny, dangling earrings that nearly brush her bare shoulders. My eyes slide over her exposed collarbone, down to her breasts cupped in the red fabric, to the curve of her ass hugged by the fitted dress, down her legs to her high heels. My thoughts rush past PG-13 and into X-rated. The things I want to do to her are firmly outside the friend zone. “You look amazing.”
The pink in her cheeks blooms until she’s flushed all the way across her face and down her neck. She used to get embarrassed about the way she blushed, as if it was something that made her less beautiful, but I always loved it. Emma’s emotions show on her skin, and I loved that I could watch embarrassment or arousal bloom under her freckles and spread.
“Keegan,” she says. “You’re not looking at me like a friend.”
I grunt, unable to find words for a moment. Forming a complete sentence is too difficult while I’m busy taking her all in and imprinting her on my memory. “Just give me a minute,” I manage. I pull in one deep breath after another before I lift my eyes to hers, but that doesn’t help. Her pupils are dilated and she’s leaning toward me, as if she not only likes the way I’m looking at her but wants me to do it again.
“Try to behave,” she whispers.
“Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“Keegan,” she says. I can’t tell if the edge in her voice is a warning or a plea, but it doesn’t matter, because the rest of the gang has joined us in the bar and is gathering around.
Our ride is waiting outside, ready to escort us around town.
We all pile into the limo, me on the inside, Emma squeezed between me and Mia. Mia has herself wrapped around Arrow and is turned away from us.
I give Emma a lopsided grin and drop my gaze to where the hem of her skirt meets the soft, bare flesh of her thigh. When I settle my palm there, she closes her eyes and her lips part for a moment.
I’m rethinking everything. I’m rethinking all of my reservations about touching her and forgetting all the reasons I need to keep my distance. Were there reasons? They’re all fuzzy right now, and I can’t blame the beer I just had at the bar. Everything’s gone blurry because she’s here and she’s soft and she’s warm. She’s Emma.
When she opens her eyes, she draws in a ragged breath before gently lifting my hand and moving it to my own thigh. “Friends,” she says, no real scorn in the reminder.
I nod. That’s what I offered, and that’s what she has to give. I’ll take it. Even if I want so much more, my dick aches like a sonofabitch in my pants. “Sorry.”
She shakes her head and presses her hand to her chest. “Don’t be,” she says so no one else can hear us. “I’d forgotten how it feels to have someone look at me the way you do. It’s…been a long time.”
That’s just absurd. Maybe it’s because I’ve always been more obvious with my flirtation. I’ve never been afraid to tell a beautiful woman that she’s beautiful. But I haven’t seen Emma in five years, and it’s hard to believe she hasn’t had anyone around to make her feel as beautiful as everyone else can see she is. She’s the only one who could never see her beauty. Then again, she was always so quiet, damn near cloistered, and so she never gave men the opportunity to flirt with her.
“It’s nice, but we just have to be careful to keep this”—she waves a hand between our bodies—“friendly.”
“If it helps, my thoughts about you and this dress are very, very kind.”
She laughs. “Are they?”
“Oh yeah. And as a friend, I think you should know when you look good enough to eat, which you do right now. Not that I’m going to do anything about it. I just thought you should know.”
* * *
Emma
“The next morning at practice, we’re running routes and Keegan slams into Dre—knocks him to the ground like he weighs no more than fifty pounds.” Mason grins as he recounts what he called his favorite story from their rookie year—namely the practice after Keegan walked in on his quarterback screwing his baby’s mother. “He fucking deserved it, and it was so nice to see him go down.”
“I bet your coach was pissed,” Arrow says. “Gotta protect the pansy quarterbacks.”
Chris tosses a napkin at Arrow. “Shut your mouth.”
“I wasn’t talking about you, Trigger Finger,” Arrow says. “You can take a hit, but some of these boys can’t without crying to Mom.”
“I was fined within an inch of my life,” Keegan says, “and as if that didn’t hurt enough, I was on Coach’s shit list for weeks.”
Mason folds his arms and looks at him. “But it was worth it, wasn’t it?”
He smirks. “Fuck yes.”
I’m still stuck on the beginning of the story. “So she was living with you, but she was sleeping with him?”
“She had her own room. It’s not like we were romantically involved.”
Mason grunts. “Right. Like you would have moved her ass down to Florida and gone broke for such a nice place if you weren’t thinking you two could make it work.”
Keegan shrugs, but I can see the hurt on his face, and I file away the information. He made light of his relationship with Olivia when I asked earlier today, but the way the guys talk about it, Keegan was doing all he could to make his child’s mother a permanent part of his life.
“I think I’d be pissed at Olivia too,” Mia says. “I mean, she knew what she was doing. Why not fuck him at his house? That’s just inconsiderate.”
“Changing the subject,” Keegan mutters.
Mia waves down the waiter and holds up her empty martini glass. “We’re empty,” she says, and I realize in horror that she’s right—and that was my second.
“Another round?” the waiter asks.
“No more martinis,” Bailey says.
“That’s probably wise,” I agree quietly so only Keegan can hear.
But Bailey’s not done. “We need shots.” She looks around the group. “Tequila seems appropriate, and the good stuff because the guys are paying. And bring a bowl of limes too?”
“You’re my favorite,” Grace says, then Chris whispers something into her ear and she blushes hard.
Moments later, little glasses are set before each of us along with bowls of limes, and I realize Keegan is watching me.
“Have you ever done a snakebite before?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Never.”
“There’s so much I never got the chance to teach you.” When I shiver at all the various ways I could take those words, he grins. “Allow me to demonstrate.” He unbuttons one shirt sleeve and rolls it halfway up his forearm before licking the inside of his wrist and sprinkling it with salt. Then in quick succession, he licks the salt away, throws back the shot and bites into the lime, puckering as he pulls the sour fruit from his lips. “Just like that.”
I meet his eyes when I lick my wrist and immediately recognize my mistake. There is something deeply sensual about holding Keegan’s darkening gaze as I lick my own skin. The sight of his flaring nostrils and the way his lips part remind me of the night five years ago when I mustered all of my courage and stripped for him. I watch him through every step of the shot, and I’m as buzzed by the look in his eyes as I am by the alcohol hitting my blood.
We’re still friends. We’re not crossing that dangerous line, just toeing at it.
What does it say about me that I want him to cross the line? What does it say about me that yesterday morning I was so sure of the direction my life was going, but now I wish Keegan would sweep me into another room and kiss me hard? That I want him to push us both so far over the line that there’s no coming back? I want to remember what it’s like to have my body come alive when it’s touched. I want him.
I lick the sour juice from my lips. “What are you thinking right now?”
“I’m wondering if it would be within the boundaries of our friendship to tell you how much I want to kiss you.” He wets his bottom lip and drops his gaze back to my cleavage before returning to meet my eyes. “Because damn. I do. Right now.”
“We can’t.”
He nods and flashes a mischievous grin. “Yeah, I know that, but it’s not gonna stop me from thinking about it.”
And knowing he’s thinking about it means that I won’t be able to stop imagining it. My whole body hums in anticipation of a kiss I can’t have. There are too many secrets—old and new. “I know things ended badly for us, and someday maybe we should talk about it. Maybe—”
He puts his fingers over my lips to silence me, and all I can think is that I can almost taste his skin. “Let’s leave the past behind this weekend. I don’t want to rehash everything we’ve done and everything we have planned.” He drags a hand over his face. “I sound like an asshole. But we only get tonight, and I don’t want to screw it up.”
“You don’t want to talk about the past because you’ll remember how much you should hate me.”
“Em?” He shifts in his chair, turning to face me before cupping my face in his hands. “I don’t hate you. I wish things had ended differently, and you hurt me, but I’ve never hated you. I couldn’t if I wanted to.”
My breath catches. I guess I needed to hear that more than I realized. “Really?”
“Really.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “But I can’t look at you without feeling things, without wanting to touch you. That’s always going to be there no matter how much we want to pretend the past didn’t happen.”
The icy determination holding up my willpower melts under the heat in his eyes.
Chapter Eleven
Keegan
The second round of shots was probably a mistake. I behaved all through dinner, keeping my hands to myself, keeping my glances in her direction a respectable length. I didn’t allow myself to touch or stare or ogle, though I wanted to, and by the time we took our seats at the show, my world was blurry around the edges but my desire was laser sharp.
The whole show, I’m so distracted by her nearness and my buzz that I can hardly pay attention to what’s happening on the stage. Somewhere in the middle of the performance, Emma places her hand on my thigh, and I don’t know if she knows that as she rubs her pinky along the seam of my pants, it drifts higher and higher, making my cock stir, then harden, then ache.
She watches the show with wide eyes, occasionally leaning toward me and pointing at a particularly beautiful dancer or a sexy couple on the stage. Every time she leans close, I catch her scent and have to give myself a firm reminder of where we’ve drawn the lines on our night together.
During the show’s final number, she leans toward me and her lips brush my ear as she asks, “Can you imagine having a job like this? Do you think they go home turned on every night?”
I know the question is innocent and not an invitation to discover whether or not the show has left her turned on, but I want to. I want to take her to the first dark corner I can find and slide my hand up that maddening dress and feel between her legs. I want to take her hand and press it against my pants so she can feel exactly what she does to me, remind her what she’s always done to me.
There are more drinks after the show—also probably a bad idea, but I love that Emma stands closer with every drink, touches me a little more often. Then we go to Caesars, and someone orders another round of shots as we try our hands at roulette and find that we’re all too drunk to focus on the game.
Bailey insists that we need to go dancing, and this time when we file back into the limo to dance at a club in our hotel, Emma ends up in my lap, her arms draped around my neck. I groan and she giggles and rubs her thumb along the edge of my jaw. “Thank you for tonight.” Her eyes lock on mine, and we might as well be alone in the limo for how aware I am of the p
eople around us. “I’ve never had so much fun, and it’s almost perfect.”
“You’re welcome.” I can hear the slur in my words and focus on each one. “Tell me what would make it perfect.”
She leans her forehead against mine and draws in a long, ragged breath. “If I were someone else,” she whispers. “It would be perfect if I were anyone but me.”
Those words take me back to another time, another dark night when desire stretched so thick between us it was hard to breathe unless I was touching her. She told me she wished she didn’t have to be herself, that all she wanted was to be someone else. “Tonight you can be anyone you want. You’re Emily Zimmerman, remember? Tell me about Emily. Who is she? What does she think about tonight?”
She closes her eyes as if she’s imagining and smiles. “She’s brave. She’s not afraid of life and she likes to dance.” She holds my gaze, her lips parted as the limo pulls to a stop in front of our hotel.
“Are you lovebirds coming?” Bailey asks from the door, and I realize while I’ve been focused on Emma’s lips and the feel of her in my arms, everyone else has already climbed out.
Emma scrambles off my lap, her cheeks pink, and we make our way into the nightclub, where she pulls me onto the dance floor and slings her arms around my neck.
“I always loved dancing with you,” she says, rocking her hips toward mine.
I hold on to her waist, letting my thumbs press into the soft flesh of her belly. “We’re playing with fire here, Em,” I warn her.
She shakes her head and presses her body closer as she lifts her mouth to my ear. “But Emily Zimmerman likes to play with fire. She’s good at it, and no one gets hurt.”
“You don’t need to worry about hurting me.” I swallow. Is that true? Will I believe that in the morning? But fuck, she already broke my heart—how much more damage could she do? “Right now, I can’t imagine anything hurting as much as not being here with you.”
