Catch (4 page)

Chapter 3

After taking Evangeline to the Mexican bar down the block from Inferno, all I expected to happen was we’d have a couple of drinks, she’d cheer up, and I’d send her home, or if I got lucky, I’d score a number. What I didn’t expect was to down six shots of tequila each and have her tease me while she sat on my lap and practically rubbed herself against me. And I definitely did
not
expect her to agree to come back to my place. Not in a million years. It wasn’t that I wanted to take advantage of her; jeez, I wasn’t that much of a sleaze. But in a strange, weird way, I enjoyed her company. Yeah, it was hot when she let me lick salt off her neck and when it was her turn to do it back…fuck, I almost came in my pants. There was something about this girl I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

By the time we arrived at mine, we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We drank more tequila and played other drinking games, including one where she let me suck the alcohol from her stomach. To say it turned me on would be an understatement. I fucking
loved
it. We got as far as stripping down to our underwear—her lying back on the kitchen bench with me trailing kisses down her sweet body. That’s when some sense got knocked into me and I realized it was a terrible idea. We both had way too much to drink, she’d just lost her father, and here I was taking advantage.

“I think we should stop,” I said, pressing one more kiss to her stomach and letting my lips rest there while I closed my eyes to try and control the throbbing of my cock inside my briefs. I looked up after she didn’t respond and found her passed out. As frustrating as it was, I couldn’t help but find the situation amusing. How did it not cross my mind that it would end that way? The girl had stumbled several times trying to get through the front door.

I straightened up and scratched my head, deliberating on what to do. I couldn’t just leave her where she was—that’d be an asshole move—and a tiny part of me didn’t want to wake her and send her home. That left only one other option.

I ran a hand through my messy hair before letting out a loud, breathy sigh then carefully picked her up, tucking one arm under her knees while the other supported her back. I did my best to ignore the stupid, tingling sensation in my body when her head fell directly onto my chest.

I carried her down the hallway and stopped when I got to the doorway of one of the guest rooms. The thought of leaving her alone in her current state caused an unsettling feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Get a hold of yourself!
She’s passed out, not sick!
I took a step into the room but stopped again. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t worried about something happening to her; I was worried about what would happen to
me
if she weren’t by my side. Somehow, she had gotten under my skin and there was not a goddamn thing I could do about it.

So, I did something I’d never
ever
done with any girl before. I turned around, walked out of the room with her still in my arms, and took the stairs to the next level—the level where
my
bedroom was located.

I carefully placed her on top of the sheets, letting her head rest gently on a pillow. I tucked her gone-wild hair neatly to one side, resisting the urge to run the back of my fingers along her cheek.
What kind of crazy person have I suddenly become?
I had an unconscious woman in my room and all I wanted to do was touch her face. But she looked so beautiful, so angelic, and so innocent… I felt a tiny smile tug at the corner of my mouth as I thought back to the crazy things we’d done in the kitchen.
This woman is far from innocent.

I summoned enough strength to stand and drag my gaze away, then made my way toward the connecting bathroom to clean myself up. I found myself rushing just to be near her again. Once I returned, I slipped into bed, covered both of us in the blankets and clapped the lights out before I could do anything stupid.

I don’t know how long it took me to fall asleep. My mind wouldn’t shut off. I had someone in my room, after all. A beautiful stranger who made me hard just thinking about her, but at the same time all I wanted to do was lie beside her and watch her. There was something about her, some sort of connection a small part of me could sense but the rest of me didn’t understand, not yet…

****

I woke with a jerk, but I was glad to be conscious. I hated my dreams. It was the only time I had no control over the images which would play on repeat of the worst memories of my childhood. I didn’t take prescription drugs because I was afraid they would affect my game play. Alcohol usually worked, but mostly, I preferred to be awake so I had more power over my thoughts.

I stood up and stretched, noticing the angelic being still sleeping soundly on the other side of the bed.
See, it wasn’t so bad having another person in your room,
my mind whispered. I watched her for a moment, my mind churning with questions of what made her so special.
You’ll hurt yourself thinking this hard.
I blinked and realized I’d been frowning so hard my forehead was beginning to hurt.
Stupid brain, always being right!

I decided to shower to try and stop the consuming thoughts. When I returned, Evangeline was awake and sitting up. She obviously hadn’t heard me come in because she was still looking around the room. She hadn’t bothered to cover herself either, so my eyes honed in on the mouth-watering sight. With her bare, perky breasts on show, the little guy downstairs stirred. Instinctively, I reached down and gave him a firm squeeze through the towel.
Calm down, boy.

Not wanting to interrupt her exploration of my room, I decided to straighten a few loose pages of a previous modeling contract sitting on top of my dresser. Why hadn’t Rose cleaned it up?

From the corner of my eye, I saw Evangeline spin to face me as soon as I moved the papers together. As I turned to meet her gaze, I fought back a laugh when I noticed she wasn’t staring at me; rather, she was ogling my bare chest. I let her enjoy the view and drink me in for a moment before I decided to play the same game, interested to see her reaction if roles were reversed.

“Good morning, sunshine,” I sang cheerfully.

I was right. Once Evangeline realized I wasn’t staring at her face, she quickly yanked the blanket up and covered her exposed lady parts.

I couldn’t take it any longer and I chuckled as I stepped toward her, placing both hands on my hips. Time seemed to stand still before she finally looked up at me again from underneath her long lashes, her cheeks dusted pink from embarrassment. Damn, she looked cute.

“Did we have sex?” she suddenly blurted out.

She honestly couldn’t remember?
This could be fun…
“And I thought you said I’d let the ‘one girl’ willing to sleep with me get away last night?” I replied, raising an eyebrow.

She gasped and her eyes widened, but her shock quickly turned to anger. “This isn’t funny.” Hitting her palm with her forehead, she added, “Shit! I’m such an idiot!”

Although it seemed wrong to allow the poor girl to think something happened between us when it didn’t, I was having too much fun to stop. I took my sweet time walking around to the other side of the bed, sitting down and stretching out. I placed my hands behind my head, trying not to react to the way my body was tingling knowing she was watching.

“
Relax
. We didn’t sleep together,” I finally admitted, tilting my head to see her. I allowed her just enough time to calm down before adding, “Although, a great deal of naughty stuff went down.” My comment earned an eye roll.

“Then why am I in just my underwear?” she asked, lifting up the blanket. Well aware I was blatantly staring, she made sure there was nothing I could see. She wasn’t foolish enough to let that incident occur again, much to my dismay. “And why the hell is my stomach
sticky
?”

I couldn’t help but laugh when the image of me pouring tequila on her stomach then using my mouth, and tongue, to suck it all up popped into my mind. “Oh, yeah, I forgot about the body shots.”

Her head shot up with an alarming look on her face. “
Body shots?
”

Oh, this is just too much
, I thought with a grin. “Uh-huh. You let me lie you down on the kitchen table and suck tequila off your stomach. It was
so
fucking hot.” I turned myself to the side to face her, resting my head on my propped arm. “You’re quite the little minx after some drinks.”

She threw me an irritated glare before her eyebrows rose. “We drank more tequila when we got home?”

“Sure did, babe.”

Her gaze dropped and fell to the mattress. I knew she was struggling to recall the evening’s events.

To deliberately annoy her, I scratched my chin and said, “Perhaps that’s where we went wrong? If we’d stopped drinking sooner, we would’ve definitely done the deed.”

That earned me another vicious look, but it didn’t last long. “So, you’re telling the truth about not sleeping together?”

Was she crazy? I liked to joke around, sure, but I was not a liar!

“Of course I am! I love having sex, but I’m not a damn somnophiliac. I don’t like having sex with unconscious women, Evangeline,” I replied, almost losing it.

Trying to calm myself back down, I added, “But you know, we’re both sober and very much awake now. So, how about it?”

To my surprise, she didn’t throw me another evil glare; instead, she picked up a nearby pillow and threw it at me. I was quick enough to block the attack, but I couldn’t contain my laughter. “I’m joking! I’m only joking.”

“Yeah, well, I can never tell with you,” I heard her mumble which caused me to laugh again.

When I was finally able to settle down, I turned back to tell her how I really felt. I cleared my throat and looked her in the eye to say, “Listen, I
did
want to say how sorry I am for your loss. I know it doesn’t mean much coming from a stranger, but I’m just glad you weren’t alone when you found out. I hope last night was able to take your mind off it, even if it was for a short while.”

We stared at each other for a moment before I saw her lips move and realized she was speaking. “Thank you… And yes, it did, even though you tried to take advantage of me.”

Her comment made me smile. “That’s where you’ve got it all wrong. It was
you
who took advantage of me, don’t you remember? How did you expect the little guy to react when all of a sudden a beautiful woman is straddling him and rubbing against him in public?”

I almost missed the pillow flying toward me that time.

Chapter 4

When Evangeline left my apartment, I was not only slightly disappointed and left wondering when I was going to see her again but also had a raging hard-on. The girl had no idea how crazy she drove my body; hell,
I
had no idea the full effect she was having on me. All I knew was I was in desperate need of a long, cold shower.

I’d just stepped into the bathroom when my cell rang. My heart jumped at the thought of it being Evangeline, but reality quickly knocked it back into place. We hadn’t exchanged numbers. I didn’t even know much about the girl. I just had to accept I was never going to see her again.

I raced for my phone, not bothering to reach for the towel, and glanced at the screen before answering the call.

“Jessica.”

“Hello, Ryan. I was double-checking our appointment was still on this evening.”

Jessica is my therapist and had been for the last few years. Well, that’s what I’d originally gone to her for. So far, I hadn’t opened up to her about my past and we’d fucked during pretty much every session. We knew what we were doing was wrong, but it was impossible to stop. She was attractive, she couldn’t be blamed for that, and I was one hell of a horny guy. We’d attempted to have normal sessions where she would try to get me to share moments of my past, but we’d just end up naked and going at it on her desk.

I glanced down at my throbbing hard-on. There was no chance the little guy was going to give up knowing I had a girl willing to sleep with me on the other end of the phone.

“Listen, are you free now?” I asked, giving my cock a quick stroke.

“I’m just around the corner from you, actually. Is everything all right?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. I just need…some assistance, I guess you can call it.”

“So, we’re talking about
that
kind of session?” she answered in a low voice. “Of course I’m free. Shall I come to you?”

Ahh
… My mind raced. I couldn’t ask her to come to mine. Evangeline had literally just left and Rose hadn’t arrived yet to clean up after the night before; Evangeline’s scent was still lingering in the air. Girls could smell other girls; I was so sure of that. It wasn’t because I felt like I was cheating on Jessica, because that wasn’t the case. We weren’t dating. Even though she knew I slept around and she was fine with the situation we had, I wasn’t a complete asshole to rub it in her face.

“I’ll come to you,” I quickly replied. “Where are you?”

“A few blocks down. I’m checking out a new office space.”

I smiled. “Perfect. I’ll see you very soon.”

I heard a sexy, sultry laugh escape her before she hung up, and my cock twitched at the sound.

I knew I needed a shower but I didn’t want to lose any precious time, so I quickly brushed my teeth and washed my face instead, threw on an old shirt, some sweats and a baseball cap. I also made sure to grab a trusty rubber from my drawer before heading out the door.

I was impressed by how close the building Jessica was looking at was to mine. It was so close the cab driver glared at me when I gave him the address. To be honest, with the traffic in the city it would have been faster to jog. But I was clever enough to know that with all the alcohol I’d consumed the night before, that wouldn’t have gone down so well.

“Well, look at you. You look like shit,” Jessica said as soon as I walked through the door. She sounded disgusted but there was a big smile on her face.

“Big night. So, this is the space you’re looking at?” I looked around the almost-empty office as I made my way toward her.

“Don’t pretend you’re here to be interested in the room, Ryan. Let me guess, you didn’t pick up last night?”

Her smile grew and she raised a brow as she leaned back on the edge of the wooden desk pushed against the wall, one of the only things occupying the space. She reached up and undid her hair clip, letting out her rich, red hair and shaking it loose. The light-grey suit dress she was wearing rode up her thighs as she slowly parted her legs, just enough for me to see she was wearing no underwear.

The little guy, who was still half-hard, immediately rose to attention. I stepped closer to her before stopping and turning my head toward the open door behind me.

“No one else is here. I was able to convince my brother to give me the keys for a few hours and I’d hand them back to him when I was done.”

Jessica’s brother worked in real estate, which is how she was able to have great-looking offices most of the time. He mainly worked in commercial, but there were a few times where she’d wanted me to meet up with him for a few property investments. I politely declined. I had a rule not to mix professional matters with personal ones. Except for the one
we
had going on, obviously.

Her sentence was all it took for me to believe her. She’d never betray me like that. Although the world knew I slept around, I didn’t want photographs of me having sex with women all over the Internet.

We wasted no time once I reached her. I lifted the bottom of her dress to her waist while she reached into my pocket, pulled out the rubber and handed it to me before pulling down my sweat pants.

“Someone’s happy to see me,” she mumbled before bending down and taking the little guy straight into her mouth.

I sucked in a deep breath and closed my eyes.
Yes, this is just what I needed.

Knowing exactly how I worked, she stopped before I came and threw me a devilish smile before spinning around and leaning over the desk so her ass was angled up toward me. Tearing the foil packet of the rubber with my teeth, I impatiently put it on and with one hard thrust, I entered her from behind. She stretched her arms out in front of her and grabbed hold of the edge of the desk, letting out a loud cry each time I pounded into her.

This was what we did. It felt like routine most of the time, but that didn’t stop me from wanting her. Well, wanting her body. There were no feelings between us, which lessened the complications. We had a perfect agreement set up which provided us with exactly want we wanted and it worked. However, this time, I was finding it quite difficult to find my release. Images of Evangeline kept flashing in my mind, and I was getting frustrated that they wouldn’t leave.
If I don’t find a way to get rid of them soon, this isn’t going to happen.
Damn it.

I could sense Jessica’s annoyance, as well. It was only going to be a matter of time before she told me to stop and asked what the problem was.

I closed my eyes and concentrated harder. My release was coming; I could feel it, it was just taking its sweet-ass time.

“What’s going on with you today?” I heard Jessica murmur under her loud pants.

I ignored her and slammed harder, tightening the grip I had on her ass. If the images weren’t going to go away themselves, well, I was just going to have to embrace them.

I let the pictures of Evangeline play through in my head like a silent film: the aloof look she gave me the first time we met; her cute, sarcastic grins; every take-my-breath-away smile. Even each time her eyelashes fluttered and her hair fell in front of her face whenever she’d laugh at something I’d say.

Suddenly, before I could stop myself, I stiffened before a powerful release forced its way through. I let out a small cry, which was both from pleasure and relief.

I dropped my hands from her hips and collapsed on top of her, breathing heavily and not caring about the sweat coming off me.

After a few moments went past without a word, I slowly lifted myself off Jessica and gently eased my cock out from her. I pulled up my sweats, ripping off the rubber first, while Jessica stood up and fixed her hair and dress.

“And where should I put this?” I joked, glancing down at the used rubber sitting in my opened hand.

“Ugh. Give it here,” she replied. Jessica reached into her purse and pulled out a tissue. Using it to take the rubber from my hand, she wrapped it up and placed it back inside her purse. “You were off your game today,” she said once she was looking back up at me. “You’ve got something on your mind. If you were just horny after not getting some on a night out, it would’ve ended quicker.”

I just shrugged, not wanting to go into it.

“And you taste like tequila. You should really consider showering.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that comment. “Thanks for helping out, Jessica.”

I kissed her cheek.

“You still on for tonight? If there’s something on your mind, we should probably talk about it.”

I found it amusing after just having sex she was able to jump straight back into ‘therapist mode’.

“Yeah, sure,” I said, waving her off. “I’ll see you then.”