remembering what he’d been listening to when he’d pulled into valet parking. Oh hell. This is what he got for letting his nephew program playlists into his account. “‘Cool’ by the Jonas Brothers.”
“I don’t even want to know what that song says about you.” She grimaced and eased a shot glass closer to him. “I think you need to drink to make up for that terrible musical choice.”
He paid his penalty, wiping his mouth with comic exaggeration that made her laugh. Damn, but he loved that sound and it made him wonder how her husky tone would wrap around a moan of pleasure. Justin reached down and tangled his fingers with hers, giving them a squeeze of encouragement. “Your turn.”
Harley pondered a moment and then said, “Okay, beach or the mountains?”
“That’s easy. I’m a California boy. Beaches.” He held up his hand to stop her from answering and then reached out to skim the hair off her face and let the silky strands cool his skin, savoring the slow burn this woman stoked in him. “Let me guess for you.”
“Take your best shot.”
Justin’s fingertips lightly stroked the smooth golden line of her cheekbone and down along her jawline until his hand curled behind her neck and pulled her closer. Harley eased into him, one leg sliding in between his own and her hand resting on his thigh. She was close enough for him to count her long lashes and to feel the fluttering beat of her pulse point. To hear the catch of her breath and the stifled moan of her desire.
Or was that his own?
He leaned in close, his lips brushing against her ear and body pressed against the length of her. Somehow they had ended up in alignment, mirrors of each other except for the brushes of knees, hands and feet. He was hard, every part of him yearning, aching to strip her down and discover all of her secrets. Not just the curve of her body, not just the places that made her want and need—he wanted to know it all.
But he’d start with her in his bed. Under him. Around him.
“Mountains.”
“Lucky guess.”
Harley shifted, moving just enough to look him in the eye, her mouth only a moment of bravery away from his own. Her eyes were dark, pupils blown with her desire and burning into his with focus flecked with flickers of doubt. Justin wondered what side would win, knowing with every fiber of his being that this had to be her choice. It was her move to make and he was helpless to do anything but wait and see if she would fold or bet it all on one night.
“Ask me what you really want to know,” she whispered, biting her lower lip and then running her tongue over the plumpness left behind.
“Will you let me kiss you?”
Her answer was unexpected and exactly what he wanted. Her mouth on his own, soft but not tentative. It told him what he needed to know—that she wanted this, too. That she wanted him. Justin wove his fingers into her hair, anchoring her in place when he increased the pressure, his tongue against the seam of her lips, begging permission to enter and taste her secrets.
Harley’s fingers curled around his lapel as she took over the kiss, slanting her mouth over his and opening to entice him inside. They both groaned and he took what he wanted, took what he needed, but it wasn’t enough to quench the craving she’d ignited in him.
He pulled her into his lap, balancing both their weights as she straddled him on the stool. Justin’s hands shifted, lifting her under her ass cheeks and pressing her against his achingly hard shaft through his pants. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her own desperate need to be closer evidenced by the scrape of her nails against his skin. The pain was good, just enough to ignite his lust to where it was flash point along his veins.
Harley broke away for air and he took the moment to get the answer he needed before they went any further.
Justin couldn’t bear to break the connection, so he murmured his question against her mouth, their eyes locked and focused on each other. “Tell me what you want.”
“I want you.”
* * *
It wasn’t the first time Justin had woken up in a strange hotel room.
He loved to travel, for business or pleasure, so it wasn’t uncommon for him to awaken in a room and have to take a moment to recall the facts, the details of what VIP suite he was in in what VIP city. It also wasn’t uncommon for him to wake up with a woman in his bed whom he desperately wanted to leave as soon as possible. But he couldn’t remember a time when he’d woken up alone and regretted that a woman left in the middle of night.
Well, there was a first time for everything.
Harley was gone. Like a figment of his imagination or the silky remnant of a dream that he desperately tried to hold on to but couldn’t solidify into a memory. Justin knew she had been real. The ache of his body and the scent of her, of them, of sex, lingered on his skin and on the tangle of sheets bunched around his waist.
He eased out of bed, grabbing his discarded pants and slipping them on as he navigated the detritus of their amazing night together flung all over the space of the penthouse suite: empty glasses and bottles on the floor alongside the remnants of an early-morning room service order of celebratory steak and lobster.
And...her wedding veil.
Justin leaned over, his throbbing head immediately signaling to him that it was the worst idea he’d ever had, and his stomach rumbled in ominous, queasy agreement. The veil was one of those cheap ones sold by every wedding chapel on the Strip. Harley had taken her time choosing it, laughing as she attempted to find one that matched her black leather pants and gray T-shirt. When she’d slipped it on, the combination of sex-on-wheels and virginal sacrifice had decimated what had been left of his very iffy mind and he’d marched down the aisle and said two words he’d never planned on saying in his life: “I do.”
What had he been thinking? Nothing. That much was clear. He wasn’t reckless but he was a risk-taker, never one to shy away from something just because the payoff wasn’t guaranteed. It had served him well in business; he could run numbers better than anyone and he’d made himself and a lot of other people a metric ton of money. But nothing was a sure thing and he made people nervous, people who only liked to play it safe, people who hesitated to work with Redhawk/Ling because they couldn’t pin him down.
People like the investor group currently considering partnering with the company and giving them the ability to branch out even bigger than they thought possible.
The people who would have a coronary if they heard what he’d done here last night.
He’d gone to Vegas for a poker game and married a complete stranger.
A stranger who had left in the middle of the night.
Justin knew what he had to do. He needed to find this woman and get this marriage dissolved before the press found out and filled every news outlet with another story about his wild and reckless ways. Adam, his best friend and partner in Redhawk/Ling, was going to be pissed. Just last week he’d pleaded with Justin to lie low, to keep his profile more on the respectable side until they’d secured this investment deal and solidified their financial status in the eyes of potential partners. Justin had agreed and he’d kept his end of the bargain.
Until Harley.
And now he had to do damage control, find his wife and keep it out of the press.
He was a gambling man, and he didn’t like his odds.
Copyright © 2021 by Robin Ray Coll
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ISBN-13: 9781488070426
One Night with Cinderella
Copyright © 2021 by Niobia Bryant
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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