Prologue Remi #3
I held up my hand and ticked off my fingers as I answered. “My son, my grandfather, my best friend.” I pursed my lips as I thought of more people, more faces. “My neighbors. My coworkers. My grandfather’s neighbors.”
His lips curved in a barely there smile. “Quite a list. No boyfriend.”
“See, I had one for a little bit. Or I thought I did. Six dates is nothing to sneeze at, right?”
“I wouldn’t know,” he answered gravely. “He didn’t think so?”
“He was a money pit. You know those houses that have really good bones and you think if you can just work hard enough to get it to meet its potential, it could be awesome?”
“If you say so.” His brow lifted slowly. “So, the bones were good,” he added pointedly.
I huffed, but his shockingly direct gaze did a number on my composure, so I just kept talking. “I don’t know. We never got that far.”
“Poor guy.”
“Oh, please. He survived just fine with the other girl he was dating at the same time.”
He grinned, teeth flashing in the dim light of the bar. “So you didn’t worry about making him happy?”
“He wasn’t one of my people.”
“Ahh.” His gaze was intoxicating. More potent than the alcohol making my head pleasantly fuzzy. “Did your friend tell you to take a shot?”
“No,” I said, drawing out the word. “But I needed that for courage because you’re very intimidating.”
“Why’s that?”
I snorted. “Please. You own a mirror. Plus, it doesn’t make a girl feel very welcome when you give her the big scary man glare as she takes her seat.”
“I did do that, didn’t I?” He dipped his chin in a deferential nod. “My apologies. That was past me, who wasn’t in a very good mood.”
“But you’re in a better mood now?”
Talk about leading statements. I couldn’t even dredge up a single ounce of shame.
“Yes.” His gaze dipped to my mouth again. “I find myself more inclined to stay, at the moment.”
A long-neglected part of me preened. This man was flirting right back.
His eyes were locked on mine. “While we’re being brutally honest,” he said, voice rough and just loud enough for me to hear over the thumping music, “your body is”—he wet his lower lip and stared unashamedly down at my heaving chest—“perfectly fine too.”
My nipples were probably tearing through the fucking shirt, flimsy little piece of material that it was. He smelled clean, a little bit woodsy, and my head was spinning like a top. Why was he so close? Why wasn’t he closer?
“I’ve never minded it,” I answered unsteadily. “Though I don’t typically wear clothes where so much of it shows.”
“A shame,” he said gravely. He rested his other arm along the back of my stool, because I’d turned to face him as well, my crossed legs slotted between his.
His fingertips brushed along the side of my arm, and I sucked in a trembling breath.
When I didn’t move away, he edged forward in his seat, dipping his mouth closer to my ear.
“So if neither of us wants to be here,” he said in a delicious whisper, “why don’t we leave? ”
My eyes fluttered shut. His nearness was intoxicating. Forget the alcohol—I was drunk off him. It was exactly the kind of interaction that terrified me, because the sheer power of chemistry like this could get you in all sorts of trouble.
Good trouble.
Very, very bad trouble. The kind I worked very hard to avoid. The kind I’d kept firmly away from the important parts of my life for years.
But tonight wasn’t my life, was it? It was a pocket of time with a person who didn’t know me, who had no power over my feelings, and who I’d never see again.
That kind of freedom was intoxicating, and it built, picking up speed like a snowball in one of those old cartoons, growing bigger and bigger until I was defenseless to stop it.
For the first time in years, I didn’t want to stop it.
I wanted to let myself be the fun girl at the bar who didn’t worry about paying bills or if her kid missed a test or if the air conditioner needed replacing before the summer.
I was just Remi. Flirting with a handsome stranger who made my pulse race.
And it felt good.
My hands fisted in my lap as he pulled back and kept his intense stare on me.
“I don’t even know your name,” I whispered. I wasn’t sure he could hear it, not with the music. I could feel the throb of the bass between my legs.
“And I don’t know yours.” On Vanessa’s insistence, I’d left my hair in loose waves down my back.
He shifted his arm forward, letting his wrist drape over the back of my stool.
For a moment, I couldn’t breathe, but in the really pleasant, I might die from sexual tension way, simply because of how he’d so effectively caged me in.
He wrapped a few tendrils around his pointer finger and tugged. “But I’m not sure it matters.”
Danger!
Something screamed in the back of my head, a survival instinct that I’d be stupid to ignore. It wasn’t physical danger, like he’d hurt me, but something far, far worse.
A part of me, the one that had held the reins of my self-control for the last decade, gave one last violent heave and tried to break, gasping, through the surface. But I held that bitch down and let her drown. Just for tonight.
Tomorrow, I promised. Tomorrow, she could be in control again. When everything was normal and I wasn’t this fantasy version of myself.
“I can’t leave,” I said slowly.
Disappointment filled his eyes. “Why not?”
It was my turn to stare at his mouth. “My friend. She . . . she made me promise I had to do something before I could go.”
“Then fucking do it,” he growled near my ear, dragging his nose over my cheek.
I exhaled a quiet laugh, willing the thrashing of my heart to slow so I wouldn’t pass out from sexual tension. “She told me I needed to dance with someone.”
“What?”
I bit down on my bottom lip, and he clenched his jaw, not even attempting to hide the feral flash in his eyes when I did. “She wants me to prove that I’m trying to have a good time. I don’t . . . I don’t ever go out.”
“Why not?”
With his eyes steady on mine, his hand was sliding underneath my hair now, calloused fingers wrapping around the back of my neck in a proprietary squeeze that almost made me groan.
“Like I said earlier, I have a son.” His thumb dragged over my pulse point, and I sucked in a gasping breath.
“I take care of my grandfather. And I’m always working so I can afford to do both of those things, and I can hardly do that.
A twenty-five-dollar shot is not in the monthly budget, I can promise you that. ”
The second the truths came out of my mouth, I wondered if that was it. If the reality of my day-to-day would break the spell that hung heavy over this small corner of the bar.
But it didn’t. His attention never lessened, never wavered.
He nodded slowly. “So tonight is . . . what?”
I exhaled through my nose. “A break in reality that will never happen again.”
There was a flicker in his expression that I couldn’t define, but whatever I’d said seemed to make his decision for him.
Slowly, he stood, unfolding his body from the seat, and I swear to every deity in existence, I almost came on the spot when I saw how tall he was.
Easily six four. The broad expanse of his chest and shoulders was all sculpted muscle, the simple T-shirt and flickering lights making him look dangerous in a way that he hadn’t when we were seated eye to eye.
He wasn’t pretty. Nothing about him was sleek or refined. This was rugged, manly hotness, and I was a fan.
And it was all for me. If I wanted him.
Then he held out his hand.
A knot wedged in my throat, and I tried to swallow it down while I stared at that outstretched hand.
“Come on, Red. Let’s make it count, then.”
The woman who’d crawled out of bed that morning never would have said yes. Who slept like shit and worried about paying bills and whether Gavin was okay at school and if Pops took his medicine that day.
But for just a little while, I didn’t want to be her. I held my breath and slid my hand into his.
His palm was big. Rough and warm and dry as his fingers wrapped around mine.
He turned and led me through the crowd of people, and they parted like the Red friggin’ Sea. Some women looked at him longingly, and no small handful of men stared with their mouths hanging open.
A dangerous thought wrapped around the back of my head, latching on to my logical thinking skills and hijacking a portion of the fantasy that I’d let myself fall into. Who was he?
Don’t ask, don’t ask.
I wanted to let this moment happen without the intrusion of reality—his or mine—because I felt good and powerful and sexy. I wasn’t Mommy in need of a nap. I was the version of me who I hadn’t been in a very long time.
He found a corner on the far edge of the dance floor, where we’d have the illusion of privacy.
He kept his grip on my hand and twirled me once.
I smiled, assuming he would do the same as he tugged me into his body, but he didn’t.
His mouth was in a firm line, those delicious lips unsmiling as he stared down at me.
His hands settled on my lower back, fingers brushing the bare skin under my floaty shirt, rolling my hips against his with our legs slotted together.
My skin was on fire, hotter than the surface of the sun, and I set my forehead against the wall of his chest, my hands lightly fisting the cotton of his T-shirt while we moved back and forth to the sultry beat.
The music was louder, but not so loud that I couldn’t hear him when he brushed his lips against my ear and said, “Can she see you?”
Groggily, I lifted my head. “I don’t know.”
His gaze traced over my face. “Maybe I shouldn’t have hidden you in the corner. Should I move us up there?” he asked, nodding toward a small stage, where a few beautiful women were grinding on each other in slow, sensuous movements of their hips. “Let everyone watch us?”
I shook my head, trying to swallow around a bone-dry throat. “N-no. Here is fine.”