Read Beautiful Stranger Online

Authors: Christina Lauren

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Contemporary Women, #General

Beautiful Stranger (2 page)

He’d been watching me all night? I couldn’t decide if that was fantastic, or a little creepy.

I shifted on my feet and he followed my movements. He had angled features with a sharp jaw and a carved hollow beneath his cheekbones, eyes that seemed backlit and heavy, dark brows, a deep dimple on his left cheek when the grin spread down to his lips. This man had to be well over six feet, with a torso it would take my hands many moons to explore.

Hello, Big Apple.

The bartender returned, then looked at the man beside me expectantly. My beautiful stranger barely raised his voice, but it was so deep it carried without effort: “Three fingers of Macallan’s, Pete, and whatever this lady is having. She’s been waiting a spell, yeah?” He turned to me, wearing a smile that made something dormant warm deep in my belly. “How many fingers would you like?”

His words exploded in my brain and my veins filled with adrenaline. “What did you just say?”

Innocence. He tried it on, smoothing it over his features. Somehow he made it work, but I could see from the way his eyes narrowed that there wasn’t an innocent cell in his body.

“Did you really just offer me three fingers?” I asked.

He laughed, spreading out the biggest hand I’d ever seen on the bar just between us. His fingers were the
kind that could curl around a basketball and dwarf it. “Petal, you’d best start with two.”

I looked more closely at him. Friendly eyes, standing not too close, but close enough that I knew he had come to this part of the bar specifically to talk to me. “You give good innuendo.”

The bartender rapped the bar with his knuckles and asked for my order. I cleared my throat, steeling myself. “Three blow jobs.” I ignored his irritated huff and turned back to my stranger.

“You don’t sound like a New Yorker,” he said, grin fading slightly but never leaving his constantly smiling eyes.

“Neither do you.”

“Touché. Born in Leeds, worked in London, and moved here six years ago.”

“Five days,” I admitted, pointing to my chest. “From Chicago. The company I used to work for opened an office here and brought me back on to head up Finance.”

Whoa, Sara. Too much information. Way to enable stalkers.

It had been so long since I’d even looked at another man. Clearly Andy had been a master in this kind of situation, but unfortunately I had no idea how to flirt anymore. I glanced back to where I expected to see Julia and Chloe dancing, but I couldn’t find them in
the tangle of bodies on the floor. I was so rusty in this ritual I was practically revirginized.

“Finance? I’m a numbers man myself,” he said, and waited until I looked back at him before turning the smile up a few notches. “Nice to see women doing it. Too many grouchy men in trousers having meetings just to hear themselves say the same thing over and over.”

Smiling, I said, “I’m grouchy sometimes. I also wear trousers sometimes, too.”

“I bet you also wear pants.”

I narrowed my eyes. “That means something else in British, doesn’t it? Are you giving me innuendo again?”

His laugh spread warm across my skin. “Pants are what you Americans so blandly call ‘underwear.’ ” When he said this, the “un” sounded like a noise he might make during sex, and something inside me melted. While I gaped at him, my stranger tilted his head, looking me over. “You’re rather sweet. You don’t look like you come to these kinds of establishments very often.”

He was right, but was it that obvious? “I’m really not sure how to take that.”

“Take it as a compliment. You’re the freshest thing in this place.” He cleared his throat and looked to where Pete was returning with my shots. “Why are you carrying all these sticky drinks out to the dance floor?”

“My friend just got engaged. We’re doing the girls’ night out thing.”

“So then you’re unlikely to leave here with me.”

I blinked, and then blinked again,
hard
. With this frank suggestion, I was officially out of my depth.
Way
out of my depth. “I . . . what? No.”

“Pity.”

“You’re serious? You just met me.”

“And already I have a strong urge to devour you.” His words were delivered slowly, almost a whisper, but they rang through my head like a cymbal crash. It was obvious he wasn’t new to this kind of interaction—the proposition of no-strings-attached sex—and although
I
was, when he looked at me like that I knew I was bound to follow him anywhere.

Every shot I’d had seemed to hit me all at once and I weaved a little in front of him. He steadied me with his hand on my elbow, grinning down at me.

“Easy, Petal.”

I blinked back into awareness, feeling my head clear slightly. “Okay, when you smile at me like that, I want to climb you. And God knows it’s been forever since I’ve been properly manhandled.” I looked him up and down, all pretense of polite society apparently gone. “And something tells me you could more than do the job—I mean, holy
hell,
look at you.”

And I did. Again. I took a steadying breath and was met with his amused grin. “But I’ve never just randomly hooked up with some stranger at a bar, and I’m here with friends, celebrating the awesome marriage they’re going to have, and so”—I gathered up my shots—“we’re going to do these.”

He nodded once, slowly, his smile turning a little brighter, as if he’d just accepted a challenge. “Okay.”

“So I’ll see you later.”

“One can hope.”

“Enjoy your three fingers, stranger.”

He laughed. “Enjoy the blow jobs.”

I found Chloe and Julia at the table, collapsed and sweaty, and slid the shots down in front of them. Julia put one in front of Chloe and held her own aloft.

“May all of your blow jobs go down so easily.” She wrapped her mouth around the rim, held both hands up in the air, and tipped her head back, swallowing the entire shot without blinking.

“Holy balls,” I mumbled, staring at her in awe, as Chloe broke into laughter beside me. “Is that how I’m supposed to do it?” I lowered my voice, looking around. “Like an
actual
blow job?”

“It’s a miracle I still have any gag reflex.” Julia rather
indelicately wiped her forearm across her mouth and chin, explaining, “I did a lot of beer bongs in college. Let’s go.” She nudged Chloe. “Bottoms up.”

Chloe bent to the table and took the shot hands-free, as Julia had, and then it was my turn. Both of my friends turned to look at me.

“I met a hot guy,” I said without thinking. “
Really
hot. And, like, seventeen feet tall.”

Julia gaped at me. “Then why are you standing here doing
fake
blow jobs with us?”

I laughed, shaking my head. I had no idea how to answer that. I could have left with him, and it really could have gone to BJ territory in someone else’s far more daring life. “It’s a girls’ night out. You’re only here for two days. I’m good.”

“Fuck that noise. Go get some.”

Chloe came to my rescue: “I’m just glad you met someone you thought was hot. It’s been forever since you had this sort of happy boy-related smile.” Her own smile vanished as she reconsidered. “Come to think of it, I’ve never seen you with a happy boy-related smile.”

And with that truth placed so plainly on the table, I picked up my shot, ignoring Julia’s protest about my bad form, and downed it. It was sweet, delicious, and just what I needed to clear my head of the jerk in Chicago and the beautiful stranger at the bar. I dragged my friends out to the dance floor.

Within seconds I felt boneless, mindless, deliciously untethered. Chloe and Julia bounced around me, yell-sang the songs, lost themselves in the mass of sweaty bodies all around us. I wanted my youth to linger a little bit. Away from my routine, overscheduled life in Chicago I could see I hadn’t enjoyed it properly. Only here, with the DJ melting song to song, did I see how I could have spent my early twenties: under the lights, dancing in a scrap of a dress, meeting men who wanted to devour me, watching my girlfriends be wild and silly and young.

I didn’t have to move in with my boyfriend when I was twenty-two.

I could have lived a life outside the straight-and-narrow world of society functions and glad-handing.

I could have been
this
girl instead—dressed to the nines, dancing her heart out.

Lucky for me, it wasn’t too late. I met Chloe’s elated smile and returned it.

“I’m so glad you’re here!” she yelled over the music.

I started to reply with some similar screaming drunken oath of friendship, but just behind Chloe, set into the shadows off the dance floor, stood my stranger. Our eyes met, and neither of us looked away. He was sipping his three fingers of scotch with a friend, but I could tell by how unsurprised he seemed to be caught staring that he’d been watching every move I made.

The effect of this realization was more potent than the alcohol. It heated every inch of my skin, burned a hole directly through my chest and lower: down past my ribs, and deep into my belly. He lifted his glass, took a sip, and smiled. I felt my eyes rolling closed.

I wanted to dance for him.

Never in my life had I felt so sexy, so completely in control of what I wanted. I’d made it through my master’s degree, found a well-paying job, and even redecorated my house on a budget. But I’d never felt like a grown woman the way I did right now, dancing like crazy with a beautiful stranger standing in the shadows, watching me.

This—
this
moment was exactly how I wanted to start fresh.

What would it mean to be devoured? Did he mean that as explicitly as it sounded—his head between my thighs, arms wrapped to my hips, holding me open? Or did he mean over me, inside me, sucking my mouth and my neck and my breasts?

A smile spread across my face, my arms stretched up to the ceiling. I could feel the hem of my dress inching up my thighs and didn’t care. I wondered if he noticed. I
hoped
he noticed.

If I thought he’d walked away, it would have deflated the moment, so I didn’t look over his way again.
I was unaccustomed to bar flirtation protocol; maybe his attention lasted all of five seconds, maybe it lasted all night. It didn’t matter. I could pretend he was there in the darkness for as long as I was here in the strobing lights on the floor. I’d grown to never expect much of Andy’s attention, but with this stranger, I wanted his eyes burning through my skin to where my heart thrashed against my ribs.

I lost myself to the music, and memories of his hand on my elbow, his dark eyes and the word
devour
.

Devour.

One song bled into another, and then another, and before I could come up for air, Chloe’s arms were around my shoulders and she was laughing into my ear, jumping up and down with me.

“You’ve attracted an audience!” she yelled so loud above the music that I winced, pulling back.

She nodded to the side, and only then did I notice we were surrounded by a group of men wearing tight, dark clothes and grinding suggestively at the air near them. Looking back at Chloe, I saw that her eyes were bright and so familiar, this take-no-prisoners woman who had worked her way to the top of what was now one of the world’s largest media firms and who knew exactly what this night meant to me. Suddenly cool air spread over my skin from the fans overhead and I
blinked back into consciousness, still giddy that I was actually in New York City, actually starting over. Actually enjoying myself.

But behind Chloe, the shadows were dark and empty; no stranger stood there watching me.

My stomach dropped a little. “I need to hit the ladies’,” I told her.

I wormed my way through the circle of men, off the dance floor, and followed the signs to the second floor, which was essentially a balcony overlooking the entire club. I walked down a narrow hallway and into the bathroom, which was so bright that a pulse of pain spiked from my eyes to the back of my head. The room was eerily empty, and the music downstairs felt like it was coming up from underwater.

On my way out, I fixed my hair, mentally high-fived myself for putting on a rumple-free dress, and touched up my lipstick.

I walked out of the door and right into a wall of man.

We’d been close at the bar, but not this close. Not my face to his throat, the smell of him surrounding me. He didn’t smell like the men on the dance floor, awash in cologne. He just smelled clean, and like a man who did his laundry, and who also had a touch of scotch on his lips.

“Hello, Petal.”

“Hi, stranger.”

“I was watching you dance, you tiny, wild thing.”

“I saw you.” I could barely catch my breath. My legs felt wobbly, like they weren’t sure if they should collapse or go back to rhythmically bouncing across the floor. I chewed my bottom lip, suppressing a smile. “You’re such a creepster. Why didn’t you come out and dance with me?”

“Because I think you rather liked being watched instead.”

I swallowed, gaping up at him and unable to look away. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were. At the bar I’d assumed brown. But there was something lighter gleaming here in this part of the club, just above the strobes. Greenish, yellow, something mesmerizing. Not only had I known he was watching me—and liked it—but I’d danced entirely to the fantasy of him devouring me.

Other books

The Moscow Option by David Downing
Losing Faith by Asher, Jeremy
Caress by Cole, Grayson
Puro by Julianna Baggott
Trouble Walks In by Sara Humphreys
Out of the Depths by Valerie Hansen
Finding Emilie by Laurel Corona