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“Business law,” she says wryly. “Not nearly as thrilling. Although—” she finishes the gin and nudges the glass back to the edge of the bar, pointedly not ordering another. “I can think of a place that’s alotmore exciting than either of our jobs…or this bar.”
I already know what the answer to the question is before I ask her what she means, but that doesn’t stop me from saying yes when she suggests another drink at her apartment. It’s a decent distance away, but it’s a relatively warm spring night, and I haven’t drank so much that I can’t take the bike. “I’ll meet you there,” I tell her. “Unless you want to try riding on the back of my motorcycle—but I’ll warn you, those heels won’t be great for it.”
“I’d give it a try.” She flashes me another of those flirtatious smiles, and the image of her on the back of my bike, that pencil skirt pushed up around her thighs, is enough to make my cock twitch eagerly. I was so fucking hard tonight at the club, just being in that room with Asha enough to drive me insane with desire, and I’d ended up leaving. Another shot at getting to go to bed with someone sounds like heaven right now, and I reach for my keys, nodding at the door.
“Let’s go, then.”
Claire’s a good sport about it, even though my bike isn’t the most comfortable for two, and it’s definitely not meant for riding in a skirt and heels. She wraps her arms around me as soon as I settle in front of her, her chin pressed against my shoulder as she looks over it, and I try not to think about what I’d give to have Asha back there, her fingers pressing into the leather of my jacket and her warm breath on my neck.
I’ve never been in this kind of situation before. I’ve never met a woman who filled my thoughts so completely that I found myself thinking of her when I was meant to be with someone else. It’s not fair to this woman that I do that, and if I can’t shake Asha out of my head, then this night isn’t going to go the way either one of us is hoping it will.
Claire’s apartment is exactly what I would have imagined it would be—a neat, small one-bedroom with well-kept plants and bookshelves, the kind of apartment that stays clean both because the person who lives there is tidy by nature, but also because they don’t get to spend as much time there as they’d maybe like to. She shuts the door behind us, slipping out of the blazer she’d put back on for the ride here, and smiles at me.
“I just have wine. Is that alright?”
“It’s your home. Happy to drink what you’re offering.” I shift a little nervously, feeling out of place. It doesn’t help that my first thought when I walked in was to wonder what Asha’s apartment looks like, as if I’d ever have any reason to see it.
She walks into the kitchen, fingers tugging her hair tie loose as she does, and all of that glossy dark hair spills out of the bun and down over her shoulders. I should want to run my hands through it, and I do—but I’m still thinking of Asha.
I follow Claire into the kitchen, and as she digs through a drawer for a bottle opener, I gently set my hands on her hips, bending to brush my lips over the side of her neck. My cock twitches, my body aching with frustrated desire. Still, it’s not her I really want, and I know that even as I reach up to brush her hair aside, still slowly kissing the curve of her neck as she sucks in a breath and starts to turn to face me.
If I were a different sort of man, I’d stay here. I’d lose myself in the sweet scent of vanilla on her skin and the warm taste of her under my lips, finally ease the ache in my balls and have the pleasure of sinking into her warm heat—something I haven’t gotten the past few days despite being saturated in sex.
But I’m not the kind of man to use someone for my pleasure. Claire might not want more than a hookup—we haven’t gotten that far—but I know it’s not fair to her to fuck her while there’s another woman on my mind. So, with a little reluctance, I let go of her, stepping back.
She frowns. “Is there something wrong? We don’t have to have that drink, if you’d rather—”
“I’m sorry.” I know I shouldn’t have let it get this far, and I feel guilty for leading her on even a little. “I shouldn’t have come back here—but—”
“But what?” Claire’s frown deepens. “Oh fuck, you’re not married, are you?”
“No. Nothing like that. My life is just—a little complicated right now.” I let out a long breath, running my hand through my hair. “I’m sorry. Really, I am. I should—go.”
Claire sinks back against the counter, giving me a long, disappointed look. “Yeah. Probably.”
I want to say something else, something to make her feel better, but I can’t think of a damn thing to say that isn’t just going to make this all worse. I should’ve left the minute she sat down next to me at Charlie’s, knowing where the night would head if I didn’t.
The guilt eats at me all the way down to the curb where my bike is parked, and I feel the weight of it, mixed with all of the other complicated feelings I’ve been grappling with since I saw Asha on that stage. I’ve never had anyone make me feel like this, and to be entirely honest, I don’t know how to deal with it.
My life has been far from easy, but I’ve tried to counterbalance that by keeping the most difficult of emotions out of it. I haven’t always succeeded, but Asha is well on her way to making me fail yet again.
Just get through it until we deal with Matvei, I tell myself as I ride back to my apartment.You can deal with not getting laid for that long; you’ve done it before.Once that’s over, I tell myself, Asha will take her pay and leave, and I can get over her. She’ll do whatever it is that she has planned that made her think about changing her mind when I told her what I was willing to pay for her to do this job. Without her around, I’ll eventually be able to get her out of my head.
For now, though—
I know the moment I walk into my apartment, shedding my jacket, and head straight into the shower, that trying to spend a night with any other woman is going to be a lost cause until this is finished. I’m barely out of my clothes and under the hot water before my hand is wrapped around my cock, my other hand braced against the tiles as I picture Asha bent over in front of me. All I can picture is her dark hair wet against her skin, those red lips pursed in a flirtatious, eager smile as I push my aching cock into her and groan at the sweet, imagined sensation of her wet heat finally wrapped around me.
I don’t need all of that other shit. All I want is her, naked and soft under my hands, the sound of that whiskey and sugar voice breathing my name as I make her come. Everything she does at that club—I don’t need it to want her. I’m not envisioning any of that as my hips jerk forward into my fist, my cum hitting the tiles as I groan out her name, imagining her arching back against me and moaning mine.
All I see is her. And for the first time in a very long time, there’s nothing else in my head.
—
I’m at the Rosemary Leaf at eleven sharp, looking for Asha as I walk into the warm, tea-and-coffee-scented air of the small shop. I can see why she said she likes it—it’s a cozy spot, with dark leather chairs and wooden furniture, and a case of what looks to be homemade pastries and sandwiches to go with the drinks.
I spy Asha the moment I walk in, and my heart stutters in my chest in a way that I’d forgotten that it could.
I’ve never seen her in street clothes before, only that heavy silk robe that she wears at the club and the lingerie underneath it. Allan and Flynn would laugh at me if they heard me say aloud that I think she looks more beautiful in that moment that I first see her like this, dressed like an everyday woman, than she did in nothing but that assortment of leather straps she’d been wearing that first night at the club.
