DAIR (18 page)

“You could say I’m freelance, as well.
 
See how much we have in common?”

Not one thing.
 
Still, it didn’t make me want to turn around.

Or if it did, the slow burn that had started up low in my belly overshadowed it too completely for me to linger on it.
 

Hopefully this sudden desire I had for a bit of strange wouldn’t blow up in my face.
   

Something occurred to me.
 
“Maybe we should go to your place, instead.”
 

It seemed wiser not to let him know where I lived.
 

Another humorless smile.
 
“It’s not big enough for that dog of yours.
 
Let’s drop him off at your house, first.”
 

I chewed on that for a bit, but I decided that it didn’t really matter.
 

More than anything, he seemed like the kind of guy that you had to worry about never seeing again, the opposite of the kind you’d couldn’t keep from staying away.

“How long have you lived in Vegas?” I asked him, still grasping for a bit of common ground.
 

“Not long at all.
 
What about you?”
 

“I’ve always traveled a lot for work, but I’ve had a house here for over a decade.
 
I only started staying here full time in the last year or so, though.
 
Been taking a break from traveling, but it won’t last forever.”

I was babbling.
 
Why was I telling him so much?
 
He clearly wasn’t going to reciprocate, and he likely didn’t care about anything I was saying.
 

“Why were you taking a break?” he asked, as though he
was
interested.
 

I’d have figured he was just being polite, but I already knew him well enough to understand that he was
never
polite.
 

“I . . . went through an ugly divorce, over a year ago, and I decided to stay in one place for a bit, get my head on straight.”
 

“Vegas is an interesting place to stay to try to get your head on straight.”
 

That made me laugh, because it was very true.
 
Still, somehow it worked for me.
 
“My boys enjoy it, and they enjoy staying in one place.
 
I took them everywhere with me when they were kids.”
 

“Do they live with you?”
 

“No, but they live close and visit often.”

“So now they hate to travel?”
 

“No, I think they still love it, I just think they’re more well-rounded than I am.
 
What about you?”
 

“I enjoy traveling, and I’ve done my fair share of it.”
 

That was it, nothing else.
 
He wasn’t a sharer.
 

“Where did you live before Vegas?”

“Here and there.”

“Which was your favorite?
 
Here or there?”

I got a slightly bigger smile for that one.
 
“Here.
 
Right here.
 
Do you have any other pets?”
 

Hello, random.
 
“No.
 
Just Tator here.
 
How about you?”
 

“No pets.
 
No kids.”

I’d figured.
 
He didn’t seem the type to have any attachments at all, let alone
dependents
.
 

I turned my head slightly and found his eyes on me, full of a disconcerting razor-sharp focus.
 

It was so disconcerting, in fact, that I began to question what I was doing.
 
This wasn’t me.
 
I’d felt a surprising surge of lust and let it temporarily cloud my judgement.
 

“Knock it off,” he said lightly, or as lightly as he could with that gravelly, bar brawler voice of his.
 
“Quit thinking so hard.
 
I told you, you won’t regret this.
 
You might be too sore to walk without a limp tomorrow, but you’ll be happy about it.”

Something heady and electrifying shot through me.
 

My nostrils flared, and my breath grew short.
 

He’d guessed what I was thinking.
 
That, and all of the sexy, arrogant things he’d just spouted, had me back to being too turned on to think properly.
 

A man that knew how to read a woman.
 
That combined with his knockout body, and those magnums, well, I couldn’t help it, expectations were getting very unrealistic.
 

This was not good.
 
It’d been too long for me, and it had just occurred to me that I was a bit desperate.
 

I missed penis.
 
I liked penis, and this sexy creature apparently had an impressive one.
 
The inner hussy that I never knew I had wanted badly to see it.
 
See it, and a lot of other things that flashed through my head quite vividly.
     

Beyond my impeccable instincts, and against my better judgement, I kept right on walking with him, all the way to my front door.
     

I let him into my house, and he prowled inside.
 

I followed him, letting Tato off his leash.
 

Tato bolted straight for the kitchen, then out his oversized doggy door, into the backyard.
 

Acutely aware of the eyes burning holes into my back, I went into the kitchen and got a pot of coffee brewing.
 

When I turned to look at him, Heath was leaning against my counter, bulging arms crossed over his chest.
 
It didn’t even feel like my kitchen anymore, with him in it.
 

The man staked his claim on everything.
 
He owned whatever space he occupied.

That sparked a visual that made me shiver, head to toe.
 

He just watched me, eyes way too intense, not even a hint of a smile on his mouth.
 

“Come here,” he said, voice low and guttural.

The most unnerving shock went through me, but I went.
 

I was standing almost close enough for our chests to touch when he reached up with one hand, gripped my thick braid, and began to wrap it around his heavy fist.
 
He did this until his knuckles were digging into my scalp and then he pulled a little harder.

It stung, but it wasn’t the sort of pain you wanted to shy away from.
 
Not at all.
 
It was the kind you wanted to lean into, to explore to its fullest, because you knew that just on the other side of that pain was intense pleasure.
 

“How rough can you take it, Lourdes?” he asked, bringing his mouth very close to mine.
 

I was trying not to pant.
 
“I don’t know,” I replied honestly.
 
“Why don’t you show me what you got?”
 

He smiled, and this time, it very nearly reached his eyes.
 
“You asked for it.”
 

HERE’S A TEASER FROM MR. BEAUTIFUL, COMING OCTOBER 15
TH
, 2014

JAMES

MY RAVENOUS SELF

It was some endless span of time later, after the shooting.
 

Weeks that felt like ages.
 
Time I’d spent agonizing and worrying.
 

I’d adjusted almost completely to working from home, as I wouldn’t even consider leaving her side while she recovered.
 
My businesses suffered through some minor hiccups for this, but nothing catastrophic.
 
All of it had become rather relative, besides.
 

So what if a few other people helped me run things, and I lost control over some of the minute details that used to consume me?
 
I couldn’t even recall why it was so important to manage it all myself anymore.
 

What was the worst that could be happen?
 
I’d become slightly less filthy rich?

We were dining privately, and Bianca was being very quiet.
 
Too quiet.
 
She was up in her own head again, though her worries were always the polar opposite of mine.
 

She
worried about
me
.
 
My stress levels, my lack of sleep, my unmet needs.

It was a difficult thing to grow accustomed to, as I couldn’t remember the last time, pre-Bianca, that someone fretted over me.
 

She cleared her throat and brought her level stare to meet my troubled one.

“I heard you talking on the phone earlier, to your Detroit manager.
 
It sounded as though the situation would best be handled if you went there in person.
 
I think you should do it.
 
You can’t stay home with me forever.
 
I’m perfectly self-sufficient now, and even if I wasn’t, I have Stephan and Javier next door, not to mention all of the staff.”
 

I didn’t even consider it.
 
She may have been ready for that, but I was not.
 

“Maybe in a week or two,” I told her, not meaning it, but using it as a subject ender.
 

I went back to my food, feeling her presence acutely to my left.
 
I was a focused man, but I could not be in a room with Bianca without at least half of my attention on her at all times.
 

Her presence was a great gaping void in my concentration— my ultimate distraction.

I caught her sigh out of the corner of my eye and turned my attention on her fully.
 

She set down her utensils, sitting back in her chair.
 

“Was it not to your liking?” I asked her, eyeing up her barely touched dinner.
 
She’d finished only about a third of her filet and less than half of her vegetables.
 

“It was very good.
 
I just wasn’t that hungry.
 
I think you actually need to expend energy to work up an appetite.”

The words hungry and appetite coming out of her succulent mouth with that soft voice of hers was enough to make me hard, though it was a fact that it didn’t take much these days.
 

I looked at her, keeping my eyes squarely on her face.
 

I’d taken one look at the little dress she was wearing earlier and decided wisely not to look at it again.
 

My control was hanging on by the
thinnest
thread, and that dress, or more specifically, the body it revealed more than clothed, was more provocative than I could stand.
 

It was overkill, really.
 

Inflammatory,
when I was already on fire.
 

Still, if I let my mind wander for even a
second
, I could picture it perfectly—her body in that dress.
 

It was palest peach, a lovely color on her, feminine and loose, with ruffles at the neck and hem, and so minuscule that it could have been a shirt.
 
I had to force my mind away from any thoughts about her long, bare legs in it.
 

It also exposed nearly her entire back, just one T shaped strap all that covered her from her shoulder to the little dimples above her ass, which was torment for all kinds of reasons, one being that her back drove me mindless, the other being that it meant she was braless, and
that
drove me from mindless to madness incarnate.

The neckline was decent enough, but the sides of the dress were cut severely, on account of the back, leaving the sides of both breasts exposed, so much so that the wrong movement could slip her clean out of it.
 

I took a few deep, grounding breaths for control.

I allowed myself one brief glance at her bare neck.
 
Her choker was locked away, since the injury.
 

The sight of her neck without it always made my fingers twitch restlessly.

This also brought my mind to other things she’d lost during her long hospital stay.
 

Like both of her nipple piercings, which brought my mind to her breasts, the absolute last place it needed to go.

In spite of myself, I glanced at the white skin of one rounded tit where it nearly spilled out of the side of that damned dress.

And felt myself begin to
shake
.

I looked away, setting down my fork and knife, attempting to hide the fine tremor that ran through the entire length of me, and seemed to be most apparent in my hands.
 

“James,” she said, voice quiet and solemn, almost chiding, like she knew what afflicted me.
 

Like she held the cure if only I’d reach for it.
 

She did, of course, but I wouldn’t let myself reach.
 
Not yet.
   

It was too soon.
 

She’d nearly died and needed time to recover, time unsullied by my selfish, unquenchable need.
 

I didn’t look at her directly, but needless to say, I was still hyper aware of it when she stood and moved to stand at my side.
 

I took in a deep breath, then let it out, calming myself and taking her in all at once.
 

She touched the top of my head lightly with her elegant fingers.
 
“Oh, James,” she sighed, tone gentle enough to make me ache.
 

She stroked her hand into my hair, gripped it lightly, and started to pull.