9. Colton
COLTON
I had planned to stay for one drink.
Three hours later I was pulling into the parking structure beneath my building.
The Strip was still going at full throttle outside the garage entrance. That was this city. It didn't wind down, didn't quiet, didn't give you a second to breathe. New York went to sleep eventually. Not Las Vegas. Las Vegas didn't know what sleep was.
I cut the engine and sat there for a second.
One drink.
She had that rag over her shoulder and those glasses and that particular way of laughing where she threw her head back before she caught herself doing it, and I had stayed for three hours without meaning to and without being able to make myself leave.
I was aware of what that meant.
I got out of the car.
The elevator opened into the penthouse and I walked straight to the window without turning any lights on.
The Strip did the job. All that light pouring through the glass, painting everything gold and neon, nothing like anything I had in New York.
I pressed my palm flat against the glass and looked out at the city.
First day. Less than twenty-four hours in Las Vegas.
Get your head straight.
I pushed off the glass. Went to the bedroom. Took off my shirt. Sat on the edge of the bed.
Lay back.
Stared at the ceiling.
Don't.
I did anyway.
Brynn was exactly the kind of woman that lost me my career. Young. Agile. Thick in all the right places. Independent, with a killer smile and excess around her thighs that I wanted to sink my teeth into.
The glasses. Christ.
She had no idea what she was doing wearing those things.
I wanted her to keep them on. Wanted to see them on her face looking up at me.
Wanted to see that look she had, the one where she was still trying to figure me out, and find out what it turned into when I gave her something better to think about.
I wanted to get my hands on those thighs. I had been thinking about them since I watched her walk away at the arena and I got the full picture and my self-control took a significant hit. I wanted to run my hands down her body and pull her into me and find out exactly how she fit.
Fuck.
The sounds I wanted to pull out of her.
That was the thought that had me staring at the ceiling at two in the morning. Her in this bed, in this light, the Strip bleeding gold through the floor-to-ceiling glass, those glasses still on her face, looking up at me while I took her completely apart.
Over and over.
Until she knew nothing but my name on her tongue.
Owner's daughter. First day. Career you cannot blow up again.
I knew all of it. I had known all of it before I crossed that street and I crossed it anyway and stayed three hours anyway and now I was lying here having thoughts that were not going to help me with any of the fourteen things I needed to focus on tomorrow.
I was going to do exactly none of it. I had the wreckage of my career sitting behind me as evidence of what happened when I let this kind of thing get traction.
So stay the hell away from her.
I lay there and told myself that for another twenty minutes.
I closed my eyes.
I have blown up my career over a woman I barely even cared about. Lydia Hargrove was funny and sharp and I had liked her well enough, but I hadn’t lost sleep over her. Hadn’t stayed three hours anywhere because of her. Hadn’t lain awake at two in the morning thinking about the way she laughed.
If I could lose everything over someone I didn’t give a damn about, what the hell was going to happen with someone I did?
Fuck.