Love Triangle Six Books of Torn Desire - Willow Winters Page 0,179

know so well wraps around me, soft and sleepy as he issues a clear demand. Something low in my belly flutters as I turn to look at him. The lights out the window are mesmerizing, but the man in the bed offers an unmatched view.

I pull his cashmere blanket more tightly around my bare shoulders.

I fantasize that this is my life for just a second as his breathing evens—that he wants to be with me, that he’s calling me back to bed in the penthouse suite he calls home because he wants me there, that this wasn’t just a one-night stand, that we could have a future together.

It’s fun to pretend, but a fantasy is all it’ll ever be.

He’s The Mark Ashton, lead singer of Vail, my favorite band…everybody’s favorite band.

He’s the man I stare at on the pages of magazines and follow on every possible social media platform with the hope to see a tiny glimpse inside his private life. He’s the man I’ve obsessed over and lusted after for the better part of ten years—since I was in high school and Vail’s first single hit the radio.

He’s also the man known for sleeping with a different woman every night, and I count myself fortunate that I happen to be his Saturday night special this week.

I don’t know how I’ll feel tomorrow, but tonight the only word that describes me is lucky.

We’re on the top floor of a building in the center of the world-renowned Las Vegas Strip after he spent hours kissing me, touching me, showing me that the rumors about his talents beneath the sheets are true. He knows what he’s doing. He’s everything I thought he’d be, more than I could’ve imagined. He was slow and sensual with me, caring and tender. He treated me with respect even though the rules were clear from the start.

He didn’t have to say it, exactly, but I knew the expectation the second I secured my invitation back to his place. Girls don’t go home with Mark Ashton thinking it’ll lead to anything more than one night. I wish the reality was different, but that’s not who he is and it’s not what he does.

He’s the very definition of a rock star. He makes a woman feel special for one night before he moves onto the next one. You hear the stories all the time, but you never think of the women who get left behind. It’s such a double standard—I think of them as groupies, a little slutty, definitely a little unethical…and now I’m one of them.

I don’t see myself that way, though. I’m not a groupie. I’m far from a slut. I pride myself on my ethics and my morals. I’m just a girl who couldn’t pass up her one shot at being with the rock star of her dreams.

It’s hard to reconcile what I felt for him tonight with what I know about him. Now I know him on a personal level. I’ve been in his home, in his bed. He knows me on a carnal level. He’s been in my mind, my heart, my body.

That all just makes it so much more difficult to walk out his door.

Does he do this with every woman he brings back to his place? Does he open up and let them in the way he did with me tonight? Is that how he’s able to get so many women to sleep with him?

Or was I somehow different?

I want to think I’m different, but insecurity rears its ugly head. As I turn my gaze back out the window to the lights twinkling below, I remind myself I’m just one in a long line of women—just the one he brought home tonight. Just the one who will leave in the morning thinking she’s different, thinking she’s the one who can tame his womanizing ways, thinking she’s the one he’d give up everything for.

I can’t let myself truly believe any of that for even a second, though. My heart can’t handle that sort of fracture. Even though I wish it could be more, it won’t be.

It will always be just one night.

Chapter Two

When the elevator doors open, I step on and push the button for the main level. That’ll get me back out to the Strip, and then I can start the mile-long walk back to Mandalay Bay, where my car sits in the lot and my best friend sleeps in the hotel.

I threw my morals away for one night with a legend.