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She could blame her father for that. Xavier Stanton had instilled in his only child the need for success at all costs. Giving her little in the way of financial benefit but much in the school of hard knocks, Carly’s father had taught her the insatiable need for more – more success, more contacts, more investment, more success. As a result, Carly was a success addict, and rarely took time off from her favorite addiction to indulge herself in a little nightlife.
Tonight was the rare exception, a bachelorette party for one of the girls in Accounting. She’d agreed to the invitation under duress, her personal assistant Avery Hightower reminding her it had been nearly six months since Carly’s last night out with “the girls,” her one and only source for fun outside the office.
Alarmed that it had been so long, Carly reluctantly agreed, only to find herself standing in front of her newest business rival all the same. She smirked, pausing to sip her drink as he studied her every move. Flattered, she tried to hide the blush that quickly crept to her face with a playful toss of her long, red hair. “I’m glad you stuck around to enjoy the… view,” she purred, full lips never too far away from her drink straw. “South Beach can be addictive.”
He nodded, reaching for a rocks glass full of two fingers of a rich looking amber liquid and nothing else. Their eyes met, the moment slowing down and his penetrating gaze making Carly feel like she was the only woman in the room. Hell, as if they were alone in the vast, throbbing, glitzy, sultry nightclub. “That’s not exactly the view I was referring to, Carly.”
His words did not exactly shock her, though she felt a current run up and down her body just the same. The look in his eyes, predatory and hungry, telegraphed his cheesy come-on line from a mile away, and yet it landed in a receptive place. Perhaps Carly was buzzed, her three mojitos well beyond the nightly limit of a glass of wine she allowed herself after getting home from the office at nine most evenings.
Perhaps she was just lonely, her last “indiscretion” occurring over a year earlier with a blind date Gena in Sales had hooked her up with. He’d been handsome, and young, but delightfully inexperienced in bed and a real clinger-on once she’d tried to explain to him that she’d made a “mistake” by indulging in a workplace romance. Luckily he’d only been an intern, on loan from the local MBA program, so she’d only had to endure the indignity of his puppy love for a few weeks after their single night together.
Since then her bed had been empty, save for the rare occasions when she shared it with one of the half-dozen toys from the “fun drawer” in her nightstand. Still none of those compared to the real, rock hard, solid and sexy man standing a few feet away – and closer all the time.
“Are your lines always this cheesy?” she finally asked over the noise of the six-piece salsa band, currently belting out a horn-tinged version of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”. How appropriate, Carly thought to herself as she tried to navigate the torturous waters of flirtation.
“Only when I’m tongue tied by beautiful redheads,” Rahm chuckled, lifting the rocks glass to his lips and pausing to read her response. In return he received another blush from Carly’s face, a sight that clearly made him smile before tossing back his drink and signaling the bartender for another.
She watched the way the bartender snapped to attention, as if he’d been hovering and waiting for Rahm to order. It was a subtle thing but, in a swirling nightclub full of hundreds of people, a sure sign that wherever he went, Rahm Farzik got what he wanted.
Am I what he wants tonight? Carly couldn’t help wonder to herself as she sipped her mojito while Rahm waited for his drink. She had no intention of giving him what he wanted tonight – that was Negotiating 101, of course – but she had to admit the thought of giving in to Rahm was temptation enough to make her panties moist beneath her shimmering black cocktail dress.
He turned to her then, catching her in mid-ogle as she admired the slim, athletic physique beneath the fine tailored clothes. “Penny for your thoughts,” he said, voice so warm and sultry and smooth and near she realized he had somehow managed to inch face to face with her between paying for and picking up his drink.
Rather than flinch and step back, as she might have with a handsome stranger, she leaned in closer and winked merrily over her rapidly disappearing drink. “Oh no,” she giggled playfully, wagging a finger in his face. “I’m not letting you into my mind quite that easily.”
Rahm smirked, a devilish curve of those thick, ruby lips that entranced her more than they should have. “Well then,” he said, reaching out a hand to gently caress her arm. “If you won’t let me into your mind, where will you let me in, Carly?”
Six
Carly’s skin was warm and fragrant as they left the nightclub together, if not quite arm in arm then certainly side by side. The sidewalk was quiet after the raucous nightclub, which he’d only endured because his intel on Carly assured him she would be there that night.
Even so, a few shots of Jack Daniels, his new American favorite whiskey, had made the horrible salsa band and the throbbing crowd tolerable. Now that he had successfully talked Carly into letting him walk her home, and she’d navigated the treacherous waters of leaving her work friends behind, the night held untold pleasures as its sultry embrace warmed Rahm’s already flushed skin.
“Do they follow you everywhere?” Carly asked, her eyes peering over her shoulder at the two bodyguards following a block behind.
He nodded. “Unfortunately,” he said, admiring her flushed skin as she admired them. “Why, do they bother you?”
She shrugged, turning back to him with that same, subtle, crafty smile that had held him entranced the entire time they’d stood at the bar. “A little,” she confessed with a slight, curious nod.
“Why?” he asked, ever curious – on and off the job.
She shrugged, bare shoulders lush and luminous beneath a passing streetlight. She wore a shimmering black cocktail dress, tight along her magnificent torso and looser atop her long, gangly legs. Black heels gave her an extra inch or two, making them nearly the same height as they walked toward her condo on Coconut Street.
“I dunno,” she said, voice low and husky and conspiratorial as she leaned closer while waiting to cross the nearest intersection. “They just don’t inspire privacy, you know?”
He nodded, understanding the implication all too well. Turning, he nodded at his full-time bodyguards and drew a long, slender finger across his throat, signaling their duties were done for the night. They nodded, knowing there would be a fat bonus in it for them in the morning, even as he knew they’d continue to linger in the background, just not visible enough for Carly to see.
His nighttime indulgences notwithstanding, Rahm was royalty, after all, and thus his father insisted on constant monitoring at all times. Of course, as a thirty-year old man in the prime of his sexual life, there was “times” in Rahm’s life better left unmonitored.
This, hopefully, being one of them.
“Better?” he asked, offering his arm as they crossed the empty street, the blinking “Walk” sign redundant at this hour of the night. Or, should he say, early morning.
“Much,” she said, clinging to his arm tightly as they crossed the deserted street. Peering at the city now, neon and sultry, both quite and subdued but also with a vibrant, beating heart pounding just beneath the surface, Rahm could hardly believe he’d been eager to leave South Beach once the PrimeTime deal had gone south.
Now, charged with the most pleasant task of seducing his fiercest business rival, Rahm admired South Beach with a new sense of appreciation. He wondered how long it might take to bed a woman like Carly Stanton, and thought for once he wouldn’t mind one of his conquests making him wait.
After all, Rahm would much rather stick around, seduce and “monitor” Carly than chase another boring tech deal in some other city, which was so often his pattern.
