by Lexy Timms
They’re pretty hot, but I keep my eye on the ball.
I scan the crowd on the dance floor. No sign of her.
“Do you see Sloane and Kylie?” I ask Scott.
“Hey, is that them?”
I follow Scott’s eyes and see them dancing in a group. Some guy is grinding up against my girl and I don’t like it. She’s talking to him now and then I see her body shake with laughter.
“Who’s the guy?” Scott asks.
“I have no idea.”
“Does she know you’re here?”
“Nope.”
“Are you going down there?”
“I don’t know.”
I continue standing along the railing, thinking of my next move, when one of the girls that was eyeing us earlier sidles up next to me. Aggressive, isn’t she? I give Scott a sideways glance.
“Hi,” she flirts.
“Hey, how are you doing?” I say, to be polite. She’s got quite a rack on her, and a nice pair of legs in her short dress.
“I’m Candace, my friends call me Candy for short.”
“Are you sweet?”
“You’ll have to taste me to find out,” she says with a wink.
Damn, this girl is mine for the taking. But they usually are.
I glance down at the dance floor where I last saw Sloane dancing with some guy and she’s gone. A flurry of panic runs through my veins.
Why am I so fucking possessive of her?
“Do you see them anymore?” I turn and ask Scott.
“No, they went back to the VIP section. Do you see them there in that booth?”
I squint and can barely make them out.
“Is she still with that guy?”
“I think so, he followed her back to her table. Do you want to go down there?”
I do, but I’m hesitant to confront her, to let her know that I followed her here.
I turn and Candy is still standing next to me.
“Do you want to dance?” she asks.
If I go down there and dance with this hot girl, there’s a small chance Sloane might see me. But it’s so damn crowded. What are the chances of her seeing me with this girl? Do I risk it?
“I’m good for now. Sorry, I’m not much into dancing,” I reply.
“I guess most guys aren’t really into dancing. Do you come here often?” she asks, trying to engage me.
But honestly, I’m not really interested.
“On occasion,” I reply.
My eyes scan the dance floor again, looking for Sloane.
“Do you see her?” I ask Scott impatiently.
“Man, just go down there,” Scott says.
I can’t stand the thought of Sloane down there, flirting with some other guy. But if she finds out I’m here, I don’t know, will she embrace me and call attention to us in front of my sister?
It could get a whole lot of awkward.
“We should leave,” I tell Scott.
“There she is, dancing.” Scott nods his head in her direction and I see her.
The same guy is stuck to her like glue.
Do I blame him?
Sloane’s the hottest girl in this entire club.
“I’m going down there.”
I don’t give a shit anymore what Sloane thinks, she’s mine.
“It was nice meeting you, Candy.”
“Are you leaving?” she asks.
“No, I just see someone I want to say hello to.”
“Oh, okay.” Candy looks a little put out, wondering why I didn’t take her bait. Why I didn’t try and taste her.
“Come on,” I say to Scott.
I don’t know what I’m going to do once I approach Sloane, but I need to get down there and get this guy away from her.
Once we make our way down to the dance floor, I practically stalk onto the dance floor, weaving between hot sweaty bodies trying to get to her.
When I reach her, her eyes are closed and she’s getting lost in the rhythm, gyrating her hips seductively and this guy is practically drooling, his eyes scanning her body.
“Sloane,” I yell over the thumping music.
Her eyes open and her mouth drops.
“Justin, what are you doing here?”
The guy she’s with stiffens and his head jerks my way.
I tower over this guy as he eyes my biceps and steps back away from Sloane.
I stare daggers at him and he wanders off.
I pull her to me, and lay a hard kiss on her lips.
She swoons into me.
“Justin, what are you doing here?” she asks again.
“Come on, let’s go,” I command and grab her hand.
“No. I’m not ready to leave. I’m having fun.”
“Really, with some other guy?”
“We’re just dancing,” she says defensively.
“He was eye fucking you,” I growl.
“Stop it, he was not.”
“Get your things, let’s go.”
She just stands there, obviously exasperated with me.
I tuck her under the chin. “Come home with me tonight,” I say, staring seductively into her eyes.
She gets my message loud and clear.
“Alright, let me tell Kylie I’m leaving.”
“I’ll wait for you by the door.”
Once we get in my car, Sloane tells me, “I told Kylie I was leaving with that guy.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re a secret, remember? Why, was I supposed to tell her YOU were taking me home?”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Justin, what are we doing here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are we together, a couple? Or would I have been free to give that guy my number or go home with him?”
“Don’t you dare even think about it.”
She doesn’t say anything more. Just stares straight out the window.
I’m angry and jealous that she would even think about giving another guy her number.
I’m going to take her home to my bed. She won’t want anyone else once I’m finished loving her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Justin
A few of us from Goldman Sachs are at our local watering hole after work tonight.
“Hey, Alexis Cavanaugh has a thing for you,” Connor says.
“I’m aware.”
“Well, you going to do anything about it?”
“Not sure, if the mood strikes me, perhaps,” I reply vaguely.
“I thought you started something with Sloane?”
“Yeah, we’re seeing each other.”
“You’re a lucky man, Harlow. I wouldn’t blow it if I were you.”
“Mind your own business.”
“My, aren’t we testy? Speak of the devil.”
“Hi gentlemen,” Alexis purrs, as she walks up to us in the crowded bar.
Damn, this is a real woman; she’s got her sexy going on. A real sophisticated siren, who screams take me to bed. The type I usually go for.
“How goes it?” I ask to be polite.
Connor just stands there next to me drooling. Close your mouth Connor.
“The Asher account is so high maintenance. I’m at their beck and call 24/7. It’s absolutely exhausting,” Alexis replies.
“Blake Asher?” I ask.
“The one and only.”
“He seems like a man you could handle,” I say. That sounds laced with innuendo, but I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.
She looks at me like she wants me. I’m all too familiar with that look of wanton lust. I’m God’s gift to women, why wouldn’t she want me?
“Oh really, Mr. Harlow,” she replies, looking me up and down, from head to toe and then her eyes settle on mine.
“Yes Alexis, I’m sure you can hold your own with Blake Asher.”
“He’s a man that gets everything he wants,” she says in her throaty voice.
“Does he want you?”
My suit trousers are feeling
a little tight right about now.
“I try to keep it professional.”
I have to glance away.
Alexis is pure unbridled temptation.
She’s mine for the taking, Connor is right.
The way she speaks to me, the way her eyes lock onto mine, the way her body moves, all scream she wants me.
Alexis dresses elegantly professional, but her dresses and skirts hug her curves perfectly.
Connor is still standing next to me.
“Excuse me,” I say, and walk over to the bar to get another drink. I need to put some distance between us.
Sloane and I have been going at it for a couple of months now. I’m nearing my limit, my expiration time with any girl I’m seeing. But I do thoroughly enjoy Sloane. I gave into my desire, my yearning for her, against my better judgment. I do care about her. She’s sweet and sassy, innocent yet seductive. She can be such a walking contradiction, but that’s what I love about her.
And sex with Sloane, what can I say? It’s special and she’s special.
She trusts me explicitly, even though I thought I would never go there with her, ever.
Unfortunately, the grown up Sloane was just too damn alluring for her own good. The week together in Carmel killed me. All of my resolve to resist her slipped away, and in its place, I resigned myself to making her mine, officially. Not just a fling, my attempt at dating her. Trying to give her the steady relationship a girl like her deserves, and it’s been going well for the most part. She satisfies me completely, which is saying a lot for me.
But as satisfied as I am, do my eyes still wander?
Hey, I’m still a living breathing hot-blooded man.
Have I noticed Alexis?
Sure I have, but I’ve tried to keep it professional. Not until Connor mentioned it and pointed out the obvious did I start to notice the bait floating on the hook, at the top of the water.
The question is, will I take the bait, nibble on it, and get hooked?
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sloane
“How’s it going with Justin?” Emily asks, once I sit down at the dining table with my bowl of cereal this morning.
“Okay, I guess,” I reply.
“That doesn’t sound good,” she says.
“Lately, he keeps getting these text messages from some girl named Alexis. He works with her.”
“Do you think something’s going on between them?”
“I have no idea.”
“You sound so down about it.”
“I should’ve seen this coming. Justin warned me from the beginning, before we even started something, that his attention wanes after a couple of months. That’s about how long we’ve been together now. I should have seen the writing on the wall, and heeded his warning.”
“I’m sorry. We knew he was a player from the beginning. Look at the guy.”
“I know, I know. I should never have let this start. You know how I feel about him.”
“Your heart is all in, I know. You’ve been in love with him forever.”
“I better just cut him loose now, let him go do his thing.”
“What?”
“Yeah, why prolong the inevitable?”
“Are you sure? Maybe you’re jumping to conclusions and nothing is going on between him and this other girl.”
“I suppose that’s possible.”
“He better not ever cheat on you. He should have the decency to break it off, if he does want to see someone else.”
“I totally agree, that’s why I may just give him an out before he tries to do it behind my back.”
“So are you going to confront him about it?”
“I don’t know how I’m going to do it. All I know is that I’m unsure about where I stand with him and it’s killing me. I’d rather know one way or the other, you know?”
“Has he been his usual attentive self? Honestly, when I see him around you, he seems to really care about you.”
“He has, just those texts are bugging me.”
“I don’t blame you.”
“I’ll figure it out, one way or another.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Justin
I’m having dinner at Sloane’s apartment tonight, and I hear my cell alert me to text.
“Who’s the text from?” Sloane asks.
“Alexis from work,” I answer, after I see her name flash across the screen.
“A fan of yours, no doubt.”
I don’t respond, because Sloane called it. She gets quiet.
She clears the dishes after dinner.
We head for the sofa and flip through the stations until we find something to watch.
“I’m letting you off the hook with me,” she finally says.
“What?”
“You go ahead, have your dalliance with this woman from work. She obviously wants you. I’m fine with it.”
I don’t believe what I just heard.
“What are you talking about?”
“Look Justin, I knew going into this, two months tops and your eyes would wander. I’m totally cool with it. You gave me fair warning from the beginning.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
Didn’t know it would be this easy, this easy to continue doing what I want. You know I hate being tied down. I usually won’t let myself be, and just like that Sloane is willing to cut me loose.
“Is this what you want?”
“I’m good either way. I’ll let you decide.”
I sit here dumbfounded, while she gets up and leaves me sitting on the sofa and goes to putter around in the kitchen.
Sloane, Alexis, Sloane, Alexis, plays in my mind.
Is a roll in the sheets with Alexis worth losing Sloane?
I suppose I won’t really know until I try it.
Take Alexis for the proverbial test drive.
Sloane is so unbelievably cool, another reason I love her.
Justin, you don’t love her. You care about her, but you don’t love her.
“You sure you’d be good with it?”
“Yes.”
*****
Sloane
Justin leaves, and I managed to hold it together until after he walked out my front door.
Luckily Emily isn’t home to witness my breakdown.
I crawl into bed and cry myself to sleep as gut-wrenching sobs wrack my body.
My memory takes me back to years ago.
When I was a girl, maybe twelve years old; that was the first time I laid eyes on the fifteen-year-old Justin Harlow. He was already a stud at fifteen.
My new friend, Kylie Harlow, invited me over to her house afterschool one day.
I remember the first time I saw him was in the kitchen of their house. Kylie and I were eating cookies and drinking milk, like the juveniles we were, and in saunters the cutest boy I’d ever laid eyes on. My heart actually fluttered in my chest at the sight of him, I can still remember that feeling. He was so incredibly gorgeous; dirty blonde hair, hazel eyes and those lips of his.
He barely noticed me as he went rummaging through the refrigerator looking for something to eat.
Even at fifteen, Justin already had a body like a man; he had a weight set in the garage and I would steal glimpses of him without his shirt on, lifting. I would swoon every time.
When I think back, he never took a second glance at me.
My crush was so one-sided it wasn’t funny, but you remember how you were as a silly schoolgirl, the hormones.
We all were dying to have a boyfriend.
Gain some ‘experience’. But it never happened for me during high school.
Sure I had loads of guy friends, but I never felt a spark or an attraction for any of them, not like I felt for the unattainable Justin Harlow.
He was God’s gift to women, or girls, even back then.
Once we got into high school, while I was a freshman, he was a senior dating the hottest cheerleader, of course.
I
would watch him from afar and dream of what it would be like to have his arm draped across my shoulders, like it was wrapped around his blonde girlfriend.
Then he graduated from high school and he set off to an Ivy League College.
Where else would the perfect Justin Harlow go?
I remember it all like it was yesterday.
Now I lie here in my bed, crying my eyes out.
And I made it that easy for him to walk away, and he took the opportunity.
My broken heart is nobody’s fault but my own, all because of my inability to resist Justin Harlow.
My heart will never be the same.
I’ll never be the same, since I let Justin into my heart, into my body and into my soul.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Justin
Alexis and I are working late together tonight.
We’re in my office, when she gets up and walks to the door. She quietly closes it.
She turns to face me, with a look of pure seduction on her pretty face.
“What are you doing?” I ask as I stand up, remaining behind my desk.
“I want you, Justin Harlow,” she says breathily, pressing her tight, curvaceous body against mine.
“This isn’t a good idea. We work together,” I say, desperately trying to resist temptation.
“Oh come on, that never stopped anybody,” Alexis says, lightly biting my ear lobe, her warm breath tantalizing me.
Then her hand lands on my crotch.
Damn, this woman is aggressive.
She knows what she wants and it’s me.
“Sit down, big boy,” she says seductively as she pushes my chest, while staring deep into my eyes.
She undoes my belt, and I can’t find my words to stop her, stop this.
I’m hard as a rock; I’m a hot-blooded man, aren’t I?
God, she looks up at me, just as her lips wrap around my stiff shaft.
“Ahhh,” I groan, as she takes me in.
I can’t believe Alexis Cavanaugh, Miss Sophistication, is down on her knees before me, sucking me hard.
I’ve got to stop this now.
“Mmm,” she moans, and the vibration reverberates straight to my balls.
She’s good at this. It feels too good.
“Alexis, we can’t,” I manage to say.
Who the hell just said that?
“We just did, and we’re going to do a lot more,” she says, standing up and wiping the corners of her mouth.
