Manwhore +1 (22 page)

He thinks about that, then leans back and spreads his arms out as he thinks about it some more. “All right. Let’s talk about how this affects us.”

I blink.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve already talked to my friends, Rachel.”

“What do you mean, talked to them?”

“I told the two bozos that I like this girl, I like this girl very much, and I expect them to respect my choices.”

“I didn’t know there
was
a choice.”

“I chose to get serious with you—and I wanted it to be clear I won’t be taking any shit from them. They fuck with you, they fuck with me.”

This conversation is . . . I cannot. I look at him. “Saint, you’re a player the likes of which this city has never seen.”

“That’s what the world sees. Is that what you see?” He looks at me curiously, starting to frown. “Tahoe threw a thousand and one parties for me. I had fun. That’s what people saw. I got drunk. I was surrounded by girls.”

I’m frowning now too. “Tahoe just cares about getting laid and he thinks that’s all
you
care about.”

“But it’s not. Is it?” He looks at me intently. “There were a hundred women for the taking, every weekend. I could have. It was all there, no strings and available. I wanted to take them. Over and over.”

I inhale sharply, and suddenly, I want to puke at the thought of his hands on anyone.

“But I kissed one right here,” he touches the corner of my mouth with a pained look, “and I starved even more.”

My throat hurts as if I swallowed arsenic. I have no right to feel this jealous. But the jealousy is here, like a knot of bitters in my gut. “I bet they know all kinds of sexy moves, your groupies.”

His answer is feather soft. “They do.” He strokes his pad across the corner of my lips again, and then leans back in his seat, and looks at me quietly and almost reverently. “But not one of them talks to me the way you do. They want money or fame but not one of them has asked me to save the world. Not one wanted my comfort. They look at me with lust but never like I’m the spot where their sun rises and sets. I see a girl who didn’t know what she was getting into with me. I see a girl I can’t forget. What do you see when you look at me?”

“I see you. I have no words for you.”

“My friends see a guy who got fucked up over a girl.” He leans forward and tips my head back with his knuckles, angling it so his gaze can grab on to mine. “They play when I want to play, but they know me far beyond the shit we do. We’ve known each other since we were ten. They know me . . . like I thought you did.”

His eyes grow shadowed.

“But you didn’t know me at all, Rachel. You thought I deserved for you to play me? You saw me like everyone did and all that time I was standing there being real with you.”

I drop my gaze as the regret sits heavily on me again. “I was scared of believing it to be true. If you get tired of me and want something new . . . or a foursome again . . . there will be no power on earth that will be able to draw your eyes back to me.”

He laughs softly. “I don’t want to look away.” His expression mellows as he looks at me between his lashes. “I’m hooked on you,” he says. “My friends know I’m serious.”

“So do mine,” I whisper, then look at him. “Saint, I don’t hate your friends. I
like
your friends. I just don’t want
your
friends messing with
my
friends.”

“If you mean Tahoe and Gina—”

“That’s exactly who I mean,” I say as I start to get off him, waving my hands in the air, but he catches them, locks them by my sides as he pulls me down flush with his lap.

“It doesn’t concern you and me.”

“Tahoe is a player. Jetting across the world with champagne and naked flight attendants. He’s used to getting it all, whenever he wants.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, that’s so. He’s used to several women catering to him at once, giving him all kinds of sexy treats like blow jobs together. How can Gina compete?”

“How can she? Against several at once?” He clucks, but he looks amused.

“See. It’s impossible. And she’s . . . a good girl. She doesn’t stand a chance with a guy like him.”

“But it’s guys like us who maybe don’t stand a chance with a smart, good girl who actually wants us for more than a quick . . . fuck . . .” He lifts his brows devilishly.

“You stand every chance. You sweep us off our feet with just one sexy corner kiss.”

He leans in. And grazes his lips across the fringes of mine. Every corner of my body feels this most perfect kiss. Squeezing my eyes shut against the onslaught of emotion, I breathe, “I’ll kick his ass if he hurts Gina.”

When I open my eyes, Saint’s eyes are fixed on me, his voice low with conviction: “I’ll kick his ass for you, Rachel.”

W
e’re on Sin’s terrace, celebrating the win, talking, the drinks flowing. Gina and Wynn and I are lounging in the outside sitting area by a pristine blue pool while Saint and his guys stand by the bar, discussing the plays. Soon, Tahoe is bitching about his dumb hedge fund manager, and how they’ve sliced his net worth by over half.

“Seriously,” Gina calls from where we sit, “I invite you to come and work at my posh department store one day, and I’ll be the oil tycooness shopping there for a day, even at half your wealth.” She adds snarkily, “You’re still worthless anyway. You act like you’re still in kindergarten.”

“I’m a Princeton grad,” he counters.

“Then you shouldn’t have trouble finding a good job if your oil wells dry up.”

“Ha.
You’ll
be a dried-up old lady by the time that happens,” Tahoe assures.

“Seriously, men.” Gina scowls when she turns back to us. “We’re royalty when they want to fuck. Thrilled to have as much sex as their anatomy allows, and then we’re nothing.” She shakes her head. “Women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place.”

“Between your legs,” Wynn mumbles.

I burst out laughing, but Gina keeps scowling, and tells the two of us, “I swear, boobs are probably the only thing a guy like Tahoe can multitask on. Two may be one too many for him.”

“Well, why don’t you find out?” Wynn nudges her cheekily.

I find Malcolm watching me while his friends keep talking to him, and a fierce ache in my chest starts to grow. Saint is momentum. Movement. He’s a man who’s always moving forward, pushing for more. Where is he taking us? Where does he see
us
going?

“You fucking sly dog!” Tahoe calls over on their side. “Stop eyeing your juicy little steak over there like you haven’t been slobbering over her all day!”

Saint lifts his glass to me in toast. “To my classy friends.” A curl hikes the corner of his lips while that same smile touches his eyes.

Tahoe shoots me a look that’s like a mix between admiration and annoyance. “I swear you’re like his favorite damn poison, woman.”

“
We
swear,” Gina points at Wynn, “He’s her favorite crack!”

While our friends laugh, I feel myself go hot, and Malcolm only looks at me, neither smiling nor laughing, simply those green eyes of his looking straight at me from his chiseled face.

Callan clears his throat when he notices our silent communication. “Well, fuck, Saint, you liking your new leash?”

Tahoe chuckles.

“Shut the fuck up,” Malcolm growls.

That voice probably sends groups of elite businessmen out of boardrooms having just peed their pants. But having been friends since childhood, Tahoe and Callan just laugh harder.

“What’s so funny?” Gina asks, as if she didn’t hear.

Tahoe wanders over and answers her in his slight Southern accent, his deep voice a lazy drawl that I have to admit is pretty damn sexy. “We’re mourning over having lost our dear brother to the most powerful thing on this earth.”

“What’s that?” Gina counters, sounding curious, leaning over to him flirtatiously.

Tahoe murmurs something in her ear.

I hear a sharp sound of skin hitting skin, which I don’t have to see to know Gina just playfully whacked Tahoe on the arm.

The boys laugh, all except Malcolm, who’s not laughing but whose perfect lips are forming his perfectly lopsided smirk.

“Sorry, ladies,” Tahoe apologizes. “To be fair, you did ask.”

“Of course we know it’s just about sex, with men,” Gina says. Her trademark realism, what others call sarcasm, is heavy in her words.

“Why do you say that?” Tahoe asks, sounding somewhat serious now.

“Men don’t love like women do. It’s different for them.”

“Well, I object,” Tahoe says. “I love my mother,” he finishes proudly.

Gina chuckles a little. “That’s different. We love our mommas too. In fact, Rachel’s momma is anxious to meet Saint.”

Saint looks at me.

Then Callan says something about going on the yacht tomorrow, and Gina and Wynn start debating about bathing suits and weather predictions. Slowly, Saint wades his way through the terrace and drops down beside me. He stretches his arm behind me and looks down at me soberly.

“Your mother wants to meet me?” he asks.

I chew the inside of my cheek. “Everybody wants to meet you,” I hedge. And when he just stares at me, I admit, “She’d love to. She’s been asking.”

“Then I’ll meet her,” he whispers.

“Serious stuff, that,” Tahoe whistles, sitting down nearby. “Just don’t take her to your dad, Saint. Unless you want her to quit you.”

I look at Malcolm, and he’s as calm as usual, though I’m all tense now at the mention of Noel Saint.

“Why?” Gina asks.

“His dad’s a real piece of work!” Tahoe declares.

“He couldn’t even stand us stopping by the house,” Callan growls angrily.

I smile wanly at Malcolm and although he returns my smile, he promptly steers Tahoe back to the topic of his portfolio and ends the subject. Easy as that.

“So T,” he begins, and everyone follows his direction into that.

I know Saint’s dad is an ass. He’s called an ass by most everyone who knows him. Blunt, rude, presumptuous. I read it and saw it online, countless times, how he tries to pretend he’s so much bigger and grander than his son. Though Saint seems to reject even the thought of the bastard, he’s made it clear he doesn’t want me within the same zip code as his father. Still, the thought of Noel Saint setting a foot on
Edge
, a place I have come to love and sacrifice so much for, haunts me a little.

It doesn’t last long.

Five minutes later, Otis comes up to the penthouse. Saint greets him for a minute by the elevator, then comes back to head to the guys. On his way there, he says, “Livingston?”

I perk up from my chat with the girls and turn to see him ball a piece of fabric into his hand.

“Got you something,” he says.

He tosses it into the air, and it lands softly on my lap.

“What is it?” Curious, I spread the cotton fabric open and make out the Cubs T-shirt, size small.
Signed by every fucking player who played tonight.

“You didn’t!” I look up at him, balling it up and tossing it back at him as if it burned.

Holy shit!

Holy, holy shit!

He catches the shirt easily, then frowns and looks down at it. “Yeah, I did.” Frowning harder even as his eyes start glimmering with pure amusement, he brings it over and presses it into my hands. “It’s yours,” he chastises me.

When he bends to kiss my cheek, I burst out with glee, “I’ll frame it!”

My friends manhandle my present so much, I hide it in Saint’s closet next to his perfect designer clothes, occupying a hanger of honor right in the middle. When I return to the living room, the girls inform me they’re leaving. Sin’s friends are still going strong and seem cranked up for more, as if it’s not 2 a.m. already.

I waver on what to do.

This staying-over, not-staying-over thing is new territory for me.

For . . . us.

“Saint?” I draw him out of the group for a moment. “I think I should maybe go with Gina,” I tell him.

He glances at the girls for a second, then peers down at me with a little smile. “I think you should stay.”

“I . . .” God, I’m blushing? “I don’t have fresh clothes. And don’t even mention my T-shirt ’cause that’s getting framed.”

“All right. Then Claude or Otis can drive your friends home, and if your roommate will pack some things for you, he’ll bring a bag back.” He waits for a reply, and I can tell by the vibe he’s putting out that he very much wants to be with me tonight.

“It’s okay,” Gina says, shrugging. “I’ll happily be driven home in Saint’s car.” She smirks.

Sin watches me, his green eyes reeling me in, pulling me under. He looks expectant and . . . adorable and . . . irresistible. Ohgod. Is this going too fast for us having just started back up?

No way.

Or . . . yes.

Maybe.

“Rachel.” He steps closer, and I can see he understands my hesitation—we’re supposed to be taking it slow—and his voice low as his lips brush my ear. “You don’t want to leave any more than I want you to leave.”

“You’re asking me to sleep over again?” I put an inch between us to search his face. “Your friends are still here—”