by Julie Kriss
Then I stopped thinking of him as Aidan at all.
In the corner of my vision, a beautiful masculine hand reached out and lay casually on the bar. “Magazine editor,” the voice next to me said.
I gave him another brief glance. “I’m sorry?”
He was looking at me, his dark eyes speculative. With his other hand, he touched his fingertips to his crystal bourbon glass. “I’m trying to guess what you do,” he said. “Hotelier. No, that’s not right. Head of marketing. Director of a fashion line.”
I couldn’t help it; I was a little amused. “Is this a pickup line?”
“I don’t use lines,” he said. “I just talk. What’s your name?”
“You don’t use lines because you don’t pick up women, or because you don’t need lines to pick up women?”
“That’s too complicated a question. Here’s a simple one. What’s your name?”
Oh, he’s good. The thought gave me a thrill, like I was going over the first hill in a roller coaster ride. I was in the hands of a master. “Sarah,” I said.
His eyelid didn’t even twitch. Not a ghost of an admission of the lie crossed his expression. “Nice to meet you, Sarah,” he said. “I’m John.”
There was the briefest pause between us, an acknowledgment that we were going downhill on the roller coaster together. The momentum was starting. We weren’t Samantha and Aidan, we were Sarah and John. We were both in this. We were doing it.
I was more turned on than I could remember being in years.
I held out my hand, partly because that was something Sarah would do, and partly because I felt the overwhelming need to touch him. He raised a brow and shook my hand in greeting. His touch was as warm and strong as I remembered. I recalled that touch against the back of my neck, and I felt the shiver of it all the way down to my lower back. Between my legs. He could do that to me with just a handshake.
Still, I turned back to my martini and took a sip. “I’m not any of those things you guessed,” I said. “Sorry.”
“Okay, then. Tell me what you do.”
I licked a drop of alcohol off my glossed lip, still looking ahead. “I run a finance company.”
“You’re the president?”
“The CEO.”
I’d thought of that in advance. I didn’t know everything about who Sarah was—I’d improvise—but that much I knew. After so many years of working for them, tonight I was a CEO.
“That’s interesting,” Aidan—John—said. “By the laws of the jungle, you and I should be oil and water.”
“Why?”
“Because I deal in art for a living, while you deal in cold-blooded money.”
That made my thoughts turn. Aidan had chosen to be an art dealer tonight. I wondered why. “If you mean that you buy and sell art, then you definitely deal in cold-blooded money,” I said.
He smiled at me. I felt that smile deep in my belly, felt it thrum between my legs and in my nipples. “I deal in beauty,” he said. “I deal in passion and raw emotion.” He lifted his bourbon glass and looked at it in the golden light of the bar. “The money just appears. Though I’m not complaining.”
My throat was dry, watching him. “You make enough of it to have a drink here.”
“Because I’m staying here.” He took a sip.
He was staying here? At the Lowell? The place was a thousand dollars a night. And then a thrill of excitement shivered up my back. He had a room, just upstairs. Minutes away.
I took another sip of martini, feeling it burn down my throat. I turned to find him looking at me, his dark eyes fixed on me. Our gazes held. I couldn’t look away.
“What are you doing here, Sarah?” he asked, his voice low.
You. I came here for you. The words rose to my lips, but I didn’t say them. Instead I said, “I’ve had a hard week. I’m tired of making decisions. I want a drink, and I want to stop thinking, and I don’t want to sleep alone.”
There it was. The words I would never say to a stranger I’d just met in a bar. But I could say them to this particular stranger. This stranger, and no one else.
I kept my gaze on him, reading his reaction, because I knew how to read every line of his face. His dark eyes didn’t even flinch.
“So don’t,” he said.
I wanted him. If there was a way to hide that, I didn’t know what it was. I wanted to taste him and to touch him. I didn’t care if he was picking me up in a bar for a one-night stand. I wanted him any way I could get him, for as long as I could have him. Wanting him had brought me this far, doing something I’d never imagined doing. And now it was driving me crazy.
John the art dealer put his drink down. He reached into his pocket and put a few bills on the bar. Then, thank God, he stood, turning to look at me.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Twenty
Samantha
* * *
It was a lovely hotel, I was sure. I didn’t pay attention.
As Sarah, I followed John to the elevator. My heels clicked on the marble floor. I could feel the pulse beating in my throat.
We had the elevator to ourselves. As the doors closed, John swiped his card and pressed the button. Then he turned, cupped a hand to the back of my head, and kissed me.
He tasted like man. Like bourbon. Like pleasure. Finally. Finally. I slid my hands under his jacket and let him open my mouth. Incredibly, with the desire that was drenching both of us, he teased me, running his tongue along the inside of my lip, letting his teeth scrape my skin. His fingers pushed into my hair, his thumbs pressing just below my ears, the heat of his body radiating to mine. I ran my hands down his chest, his perfect stomach. God, he was so gorgeous.
He broke away, not moving far from my mouth. “You didn’t say yes,” he said.
I moved my hand further down, slid my fingers beneath his belt. “Yes,” I said.
His body tensed under my touch, his muscles flexing in surprise. I paused my hand. “You’re very forward,” he said.
Sarah wouldn’t give a damn about that. “Do you object?”
In answer he leaned down and kissed the side of my neck, letting his teeth scrape the sensitive skin. I let out a breath and my eyes closed in bliss. Every nerve ending in my body was on fire.
“I think I can make you a little more obedient,” he said in my ear.
Before I could answer, the bell pinged and the elevator doors opened. John pulled my hand from under his belt and led me down the hall.
I followed him. The longer I did this, the more I was Sarah. The man leading me into his hotel room wasn’t my boss, he was a stranger I’d just met an hour ago. I was a woman who spoke her desires and got what she wanted, and what I wanted was sex for one night with the man before me. I didn’t know this stranger’s last name, and it didn’t matter. I was going to have him anyway.
He didn’t turn the lights on in the room. He closed the door behind me and pulled me into another kiss, this one deeper. I kissed him back as I tugged his tie out of its knot.
He broke the kiss as I dropped the tie on the floor and pushed his jacket off his shoulders. “That forwardness again,” he said in the dim light, amused.
I dropped the jacket alongside the tie. “I’m used to getting what I want.” The words felt good to say.
“And what do you want?” he asked.
I ran my hands over his shoulders through the thin fabric of his dress shirt. I traced their lines with my palms, then started on his buttons. “I told you, I want to stop thinking for a while.” The words were the truth, I realized even as I said them. “To think about nothing. To feel.” I looked at his gorgeous face in the shadows. “What do you want?”
He put a hand to my waist and pulled me to him, dropping his mouth to my neck. I could feel the hard muscles of his body against me, his chest against the fabric on my breasts. “I think you’ll find my wants are very simple,” he said against my skin. “Turn around.”
I obeyed. His deft hands found my zipper and unzipped my
dress, letting it pool to the floor at my feet. I sighed. My oversensitized skin had felt constrained by the tight fabric.
Now I was in my black bra, my panties, and my heels. John stepped up behind me, ran a strong hand from the back of my neck down my spine. “Walk to the bedroom,” he said.
I didn’t even think of disobeying. I walked across the room to the lush bedroom, where the bed was piled high with luxurious pillows. The blinds on the window were partly open, and the winking lights of New York were the only illumination in the room. There was just us, high above the city in the dark.
I walked to the edge of the bed and he stopped me, his hand on the back of my neck again. It was commanding, though it wasn’t rough. I leaned into his touch without thinking and closed my eyes.
He stepped up behind me and put his palms on my stomach. I could feel the fabric of his thighs against my ass, his shirt against my back. His warm body beneath the layer of fabric. His palms moved up my body until they cupped my breasts through the thin lace fabric of my bra.
I gasped and leaned my weight back, my head resting on his shoulder. My breasts weren’t overly big and his hands engulfed them easily, stroking and gently squeezing. I felt every movement between my legs.
Again he dropped his mouth to my skin. “I know what you want,” he said as one hand moved down my belly, beneath my panties, and his fingers slid into my pussy.
I moaned, not quietly, my head still resting back against his shoulder. I wasn’t thinking now. I pushed my hips up into his hand.
He was touching me. This stranger, this man I didn’t know, was stroking me, and I was letting him. He could feel how wet I was, feel how desperate I was. The thought just made me hotter.
“You want someone to touch you,” John said, his fingers moving in a slow, sure rhythm. “You want someone to make you feel good. No names, no attachments, no expectations. Just pleasure. That’s what I want, too.”
His fingers moved down to my entrance, then up to my clit, sure and easy. I squirmed and closed my eyes. Everything in the world vanished but his hand, his voice, the feeling of his body against my back. This was already better than anything I’d ever experienced, and he wasn’t even fucking me. Any inhibitions I had were vanishing under the stroke of his fingers.
His voice lowered to a growl against my skin. “You want to be pleased,” he said, his hand still moving. “You want to be told what to do and pleasured at the same time. You don’t want an amateur. That wouldn’t be nearly enough for you. You want a man who knows what the fuck he’s doing.”
The orgasm shivered through me, starting somewhere behind my knees, on the insides of my thighs, then shaking my whole body. Sounds I didn’t recognize came out of my mouth, and I would have lost my balance if I hadn’t been leaning against him, if he didn’t have me in his grip. I kept my eyes closed, and he held me through every aftershock until I started to come down.
His fingers hooked beneath the elastic at my hips and he pulled my panties down, letting them drop to the floor. “Put your hands on the bed,” he said, his voice hoarse.
I did. I leaned forward and did as he said, and now I was in an incredibly vulnerable position, naked and exposed to him, unable to see him. My heart was racing, competing with the post-orgasm bliss running through my body. I heard the click of his belt, the soft sound of a zipper. Then the crinkle of a condom package.
He leaned over me, and I felt fabric against my back; he still had his shirt on. “I wanted to do this the first second I saw you,” he said, and pushed into me.
I closed my eyes again, a breath escaping my throat. Good. It felt so good. He made a low sound that was tightly wound, yet mirrored my own pleasure, and then he moved out, then in again.
I curled my hands in the bedspread as we found a rhythm. He was in perfect command as he pushed deep into me, then deeper again, yet the ragged sound of his breath told me he was as consumed as I was. His strong hands dug into my hips as he dropped his mouth to my ear. “You feel fucking incredible,” he said.
I shivered at his words, a tremor of pleasure that shook my whole body. He must have felt it, because his movements grew sharper, his breath more harsh. I rode the waves until he finally stilled, letting out another harsh breath as he came.
There was a second of silence, both of us catching our breath. Then he braced a hand on the bed and stood, pulling out of me. I heard him walk to the bathroom and close the door.
I turned and sat on the bed, my hands nearly shaking. For the first time tonight, doubt washed over me like a bucket of cold water. I felt incredible, my body and brain still singing with pleasure. But what happened now? Was the game over, or did we keep playing? Was I expected to leave?
We’d set no rules, no plan. Until a few minutes ago, it had been thrilling. Now I wondered if I was supposed to take my cue, get dressed, and walk out without a word.
My fantasy, of course, had never included this particular part of the scene. No one’s fantasy did—the aftermath, the decision whether or not to make eye contact, whether or not to talk, whether one or both of us was supposed to sleep, was not fantasy material. Like everyone else, I ended my fantasies at the orgasm and didn’t think any further. And now I didn’t know what to do.
In the bathroom, the water ran. He’d come out a minute from now, still dressed, and find me sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing only my bra and my heels. It was going to be strange. Reluctantly, I leaned down and picked up my panties from the floor, untangling them so I could put them back on.
The bathroom door opened, and Aidan walked out. No, John. Was I still supposed to think of him as John?
The top buttons of his shirt were undone, his hair slightly disheveled. Otherwise he was dressed, as if all he had to do was slip on his tie and his jacket and go back down to the bar. His dark gaze moved over me, then dropped to my hands, which held my panties.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
Was that surprise in his voice? I couldn’t tell. I went for the obvious answer. “I’m putting these on.”
His gaze came back up to my face. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Sarah,” he said. “We aren’t even close to finished.”
Twenty-One
Aidan
* * *
If I was being painfully honest—and at this point, I had no choice—I went into the bathroom mostly to collect myself. To gather my wits and get myself together. To take a breath and be Aidan again.
Except I wasn’t Aidan. Or was I? We hadn’t planned this far—I hadn’t planned this far. I’d planned the seduction, but like an idiot I hadn’t thought about what would come afterward.
The seduction itself had nearly pulled me to pieces.
I’d never had an experience like that with any woman. Samantha, playing Sarah, was fucking amazing. She was confident and sexy, raw and vulnerable. She played a game of deception, while underneath I could sense all of her exposed nerves. The combination was brilliant, erotic, and so explosive I’d nearly broken character a dozen times. It had taken every ounce of self-control I had not to throw the whole game away.
But I hadn’t. Because she liked the game, and so did I. The question was, now that we had both come and she was naked on my bed, were we still playing it?
Part of me wanted to go out there as Aidan and take her in my arms. Ask how she was feeling, if she was still okay. Talk to her about what we’d just done and how we’d done it.
But even as I cleaned up, then ran a hand through my hair as I looked in the mirror, I knew that would be the wrong move. There was a reason for this game—a reason beyond our own pleasure, that was. It was the only way to keep our other relationship, our work relationship, alive.
In short, if I ended the game now, on Monday Samantha would quit. And that was unthinkable.
So, John the art dealer it was.
I walked back out of the bathroom to see Sarah—I had to think of her as Sarah—sitting on the edge of the bed, naked except for her bra and her shoes. Her hair was onl
y slightly mussed, her makeup—that black eye makeup, so bold and so unlike her—still in place. Her knees were pressed together, a decorous pose for a woman so naked, and she was holding her black panties in her hand.
As if she was leaving.
That was when I realized—Sarah leaving my room after a quick fuck was definitely not part of the game.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
She looked up at me. In that look, I knew that she was as lost as I was, that she didn’t know how the game went now either. For some reason that gave me confidence. She was looking for me to take the lead, so I would.
“I’m putting these on,” she said, her voice neutral. Waiting for me to give her a signal.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Sarah,” I said. “We aren’t even close to finished.”
There it was: my signal. If she wanted to end the game, all she had to do was put her clothes on and walk out. I wouldn’t stop her.
There was the briefest flicker in her eyes, which gave me satisfaction. Then she blinked. “You’re awfully confident that I’ll want another round,” she said.
I smiled at her. I raised my hands and began unbuttoning my shirt. “You loved it.”
“You were adequate.” But her expression gave her away, her hungry eyes, as they followed every move of my fingers, taking in my skin as I unbuttoned the shirt.
“I don’t see you leaving.” I pulled the shirt off and dropped it, started on my belt. “In fact, I don’t even see you putting those panties on. So drop them.”
Her eyes moved down me. “I’ll do it if you drop your pants first, John.”
Did she put the slightest emphasis on that last word? Maybe. I didn’t care. I was John now, the art dealer who had started his evening having a lonely drink at a bar and ended it unexpectedly lucky. John was impulsive, a man who didn’t make many plans but always followed a streak of luck if he found one.
