Moments In Time: A Collection of Short Fiction (38 page)

I sat down on one of the little stools provided and ordered a dirty Red Bull and Jägermeister. There was something about the black-licorice-and-energy-drink flavor that made me feel young and careless when I drank it. At home, I rarely drank any kind of alcohol except for the occasional beer, but on my one night away, I didn’t have to be worried about staying sober in case of an emergency. I could get as drunk as I wanted, and I planned on having a buzz within half an hour.

Strung as tight as a violin string, I was fidgeting with the straw in my drink when I felt someone brush against my back before sliding into the seat next to me. I glanced at the clock above the bar, noting it was a little after six, and took a deep breath before turning to brush off the man who was sitting much too close to my side. When I finally turned and met his eyes, I smiled.

I wouldn’t be brushing him off.

Eyes so dark brown they were almost black stared straight into mine with an intensity that made my breath catch in my throat. He had thick, dark brows, a prominent jaw and cheekbones, and his nose was just this side of being too big for his face. You’d think the various strong features would make his face seem unattractive, they all seemed to come together into the most gorgeous man I’d ever laid eyes on. His hair was short on the sides, but longer on top and brushed toward the center in a faux hawk that should have seemed ridiculous on someone his age, but somehow it worked for him.

I couldn’t look away. When I seemed dumbstruck, his mouth edged up on one side and he reached behind me to rest his hand on the back of my barstool as he leaned toward me.

“What’s a beautiful girl like you doing sitting alone in an empty bar?” he asked quietly.

The spell was broken, and I laughed in a short chirp of surprise. “Really? That’s your pickup line?” I asked, raising one eyebrow in question. I leaned forward to take a sip of my drink, my gaze never leaving his face.

God, he wasn’t just attractive, he also smelled
really
good. He wasn’t wearing some expensive cologne, more like Lever 2000, but whatever it was had me slowly and deeply inhaling through my nose.

“Yeah, pretty bad, huh?” He smiled at me before raising his hand to catch the bartender’s attention and then ordered a beer.

“Well, it could have been worse,” I said teasingly, the nervous flutters in my belly calming a little as I watched him take a sip of his beer. The motions were so familiar to me—the slow tip of the bottle raised with just the end of his fingers, the way his tongue just barely ran across his bottom lip before he swallowed. It was like he was putting on an erotic show just for me, but he had no idea he was doing it.

I wasn’t sure how he wanted the night to play out, so I just sat back against his hand and waited for him to speak again. He seemed to be content, his serious eyes searching out each of the features on my face, so I sat quietly, letting him do it. I knew what the end game would be. I could wait.

“I wanna ask if you come here a lot, but I won’t,” he said, laughing quietly and running his fingers across my bare back. “Fuck, you’re gorgeous.”

It was the second time he’d said something about my looks. I knew I looked hot tonight, but it still made me blush that he kept repeating it. Why the hell was I blushing? The longer I fought my blush, the worse it got, until I felt like a complete idiot.

I quickly jumped in to change the subject. “That’s a nice tan line you’ve got going there,” I told him, lightly touching the faint line on his temple where his sunglasses must have rested.

“Yeah,” he replied offhandedly. “I was working out of the country for a bit. Pretty sunny where I was at.”

“Sunnier than California? What do you do?” I asked him from under my lashes, trying not to shudder as his fingers traced the line of my spine.

“Nothing exciting.” He brushed off my question with a small shake of his head. “I’d rather hear about you.”

“If your job
isn’t
exciting and you get to travel the world, then mine would put you to sleep,” I told him with a smile. “I’m a stay-at-home mom with three kids. The most exciting thing I do is take out the garbage when it’s dark outside.”

“Three kids, huh? Boys or girls?” he asked me, watching my mouth intently as he waited for my answer. I licked my lips in response to his look, and watched his nostrils flare before he glanced back up to meet my eyes.

“I’ve got two little boys and a girl. The boys are monsters,” I told him with a grin. “The girl only slightly less so.”

“Ha! Spoken like a true mama! Don’t they say that moms dote on their sons, and fathers on their daughters?” He shook his head at me in reproof, smiling the entire time.

“Yeah, I guess that’s pretty true. My daughter is definitely a daddy’s girl,” I told him ruefully, watching his eyes flicker as I spoke.

“Yeah?” he asked me quietly, but with startling intensity.

I bit the inside of my cheek at the turn of our conversation, and moved my gaze to his jaw, where I could see the muscle clenching over and over.

“Yeah,” I whispered back, not willing to shatter the cocoon that seemed to envelop us as we spoke. I wanted to stay there in our quiet little world, but I knew we shouldn’t. Our conversation had grown too serious for the night that I had planned. I wanted to be
Rachel, not someone’s mom. I wanted to be carefree and fun, so decided to change the subject, but before I could, he ran his hand up to lightly grip the back of my neck.

“You don’t look like anyone’s mother tonight,” he growled.

Holy shit. I could finally feel the effects of the liquor in my bloodstream, and the sensation of his warm hand on my skin was making me giddy.

“You want to get out of here?” I asked him without a hint of hesitation. God, that bartender must have made my drink strong as hell; I wasn’t usually so .
 . . aggressive.

I watched in astonishment as he tilted his head back and laughed loudly, his even white teeth shining in the dim light of the bar. He had a beautiful smile, and when his mouth opened to laugh, I caught a glimpse of a little imperfection in the form of a silver cap in the back of his mouth. That little, seemingly innocent piece of dental work acted like a freaking aphrodisiac. Without it, his smile was almost too classically beautiful, but with it, he turned into a flesh-and-blood man. Sexy. Someone I could bite and scratch and wrap my body around.

He finished laughing as I watched, and when he tilted his eyes back down he went from smiling to clenching his jaw again, his eyes narrowing. I was turned on and it showed.

“How about we dance a little first?” he asked, not waiting for an answer before grabbing my hand and pulling me down from my stool.

I laughed a little as he led me toward the empty dance floor, trying to keep up with his long strides and failing so miserably that he eventually had to come to a complete stop to let me catch up.

“Damn, girl.” He groaned as he finally saw what I was wearing in its entirety. His eyes did a slow sweep from my toes to the top of my hair, and then back down to my feet again. “How do you even walk in those?”

I watched his face in amusement as he battled between bafflement and lust, enjoying the way he was eyeing my body. We were standing awkwardly in the middle of the bar, but he didn’t seem fazed by that fact as he took his time checking me out.

“Well,” I told him, a small smile on my face, “I’ve had a whole lot of practice. But I can’t take very long strides between the dress and these shoes.”

I waited for him to either start moving to the dance floor or say something back to me, but he seemed to be in his own little world. When I started to fidget with my dress, worried that something was wrong by the way he was looking at it, he snapped out of whatever it was that held him and shook his head.

“I’m sorry! Fuck, I’m just .
 . .” He looked at the floor and laughed a little to himself before meeting my eyes and bringing our joined hands between our bodies. “I’m so fucking turned on right now, I feel like a sixteen-year-old kid,” he told me, brushing the back of my hand against his arousal. “We should probably take a rain check on that dance if we don’t want to be arrested for public indecency.”

He started to pull me back to the bar to pay our tabs but stopped suddenly and spun around, causing me to bump into his chest and totter on my sky-high heels. I was trying to catch my balance when he let go of my hand and wrapped one arm around me—practically pulling my toes from the floor as our chests met. His other hand reached out to lightly brush my eyebrow with his fingertip, and I felt my eyes flutter at the sensation. God, I’d missed that feeling.

Before I could gather my thoughts or prepare myself, his hand had swept down my cheek to firmly grab my jaw. Within seconds, he was licking the lip gloss off my mouth in a frenzy. My hands moved up to his shoulders to push him back, I was feeling a little self-conscious about being on display, but the desperation in his kiss had me wrapping my hand around the side of his neck and rubbing his jaw softly with my thumb instead.

I remembered a quote, “Only light can conquer darkness,” and in that moment, I knew I had to fight his desperation with calm—even as I was willing away tears. So he wanted to make out like a couple of drunk kids at a frat party, in front of everyone in the bar? I’d let him. It’s not like he was asking me to ride him on a bar stool.

Once my lips had been thoroughly cleaned of any gloss whatsoever and my lips were feeling sore and swollen from his assault, he seemed to get his shit together and slowly pulled back. He was embarrassed. His eyes wouldn’t meet mine and his cheeks had slowly taken on a deep red shade as he pulled back between nibbling bites. When he was finally done, he leaned his forehead against mine so our noses were barely touching when he spoke in a low voice.

“Sorry about that,” he murmured.

It was apparent he was feeling out of his element after his loss of control, and I didn’t like it. His kiss was one of the best things I’d ever tasted. Hell, after that I was so turned on I would have agreed to dance on the bar and give him a personal strip tease. Instead of making a big deal about his mouth attack, I decided to play it cool as I tugged him toward the bar.

“Shit, if that’s what you do to my lips, you’re going down on me before we get off the elevator,” I told him with a smile.

We made our way to the elevator in a hasty retreat that had me giggling. We didn’t talk; we were in too much of a hurry for that, our anticipation building with each step closer to the hotel room. His hands never left my body, though, they roamed freely over my torso and back as if he were reassuring himself that I was still there with him. I expected him to at least kiss me in the elevator after my little comment, but he didn’t. He just stood silently behind me, running his hands up my sides and then down over my hips.

He ushered me to a room at the end of the long hallway, pulling out a key card from the back of his jeans as he went. I’d paid little attention to what he was wearing in the bar, I’d been too enamored with his beautiful face, but now as we stood in the bright lights of the hallway, I took stock of what he had on. He was wearing jeans that just fit, not baggy or the ridiculous skinny jeans I’d seen on many of the guys around town. His shirt was a nice button-down that was gray with white pinstripes, and the sleeves were rolled up, showcasing tattoos that covered both his forearms. I gazed down at his hand that was fiddling with the key card and noticed scratches covering the back of his knuckles, and his shiny black wedding ring. I quickly looked away. I didn’t want to think about what was on his hand.

By the time I’d finished checking him out, he was guiding me into his room with a hand on my back. My heart raced and my hands shook as I dropped the purse that had been hanging on my wrist to the floor. I started for the bed, only to be caught by a hand around my belly before the door even closed. He gently pushed my curls aside with his other hand, leaving my neck bare so he could run his nose up the side of it, inhaling deeply.

I tipped my head back onto his shoulder, giving him more room to explore as he opened his mouth against the skin below my ear. I might have made a noise, I wasn’t sure, but soon the hand not securing me at my waist was pulling my dress slowly up my thighs. I knew from his vantage point above my shoulder he could see my chest heaving and my breasts almost popping out of the top of my bra, but I didn’t care. I wanted him to look at me. His hips ground against my ass in a slow rhythm, and I don’t think he was even aware he was doing it. I felt powerful knowing I’d turned him on.

When his hand reached the top of my thighs, he groaned into my neck and his hips stopped moving.

“Fuuuck. You’re wearing a damn garter belt?” He groaned through his teeth.

I was feeling pretty proud of myself until he completely let go of me and stepped farther into the room. I felt the stirrings of embarrassment as I stood watching him as he crossed the room to sit on the king-sized bed.

Had I gone too far? Maybe the garter belt made me look like I was trying too hard.

My hands begin to fidget and I quickly relaxed them, letting them fall limply to my sides. I knew he liked the garter belt by his initial reaction. I defensively straightened my shoulders. Sexy lingerie was nothing to be embarrassed about.

He sat watching me for less than a minute, but it seemed like two hours before his gravelly voice told me exactly why he’d let me go.