“Hmm. Vague.”
He lifted one shoulder. “Where are you from?”
“Originally? Somewhere in the Eastern Seaboard.”
“Also vague,” he said.
“Vague is okay. We’re just talking in the hall.”
“Are we?” he asked. He put his hand back on her arm, his fingertips hot against her skin.
She’d never really flirted much, either. Her last date had been long enough ago that she didn’t want to count. And her sex life? That was nonexistent. A younger brother and parents who were usually passed out somewhere made a sex life impossible. Plus, dating someone implied letting someone in. Bringing them into that hellhole she called a life.
Anyway, there was no man she found overly appealing in that deadbeat town. All she’d ever wanted to do was leave it behind.
And since she’d left, she’d been working. Tirelessly toward the moment she’d just had. Toward getting herself in a position where she could be in this social circle. Toward looking Jason Treffen in the eye. Gathering evidence against him.
Suddenly she felt exhausted. She felt every missed opportunity in her life, every emotion she’d dulled or ruthlessly cut from herself, every moment she’d sacrificed, including that moment of eye contact in the ballroom with this man, so that she could have this revenge.
So that she could see justice done.
And suddenly, she didn’t want to go back into the ballroom. She wanted to stay in the hall, with him. With the man who carried a matching darkness inside of him. A man who she knew, instinctively, would want what she did.
She felt like he was the one. The one to tear the lid off all those fantasies that she kept down deep. Like he was the first one to offer real, serious temptation.
“Maybe it’s more than that,” she said. “If we’re being honest, I’m not especially up on the flirting game, either.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Why?”
“Why did you find it hard to believe I wasn’t?”
“Because you’re so forward.”
He shifted his weight, drew closer to her. “Oh, don’t mistake me. I might not be a flirt, but when I want something, I get it. When I want someone,” he said, lifting his hand and drawing it over her cheek, “I make sure I have her.”
She should hate this. She should shove him back. She should tell him to go to hell with all his proprietary male garbage. But she didn’t.
Because she didn’t hate it.
Because this wasn’t the game she’d been taught to loathe so much. This wasn’t the thing that Sarah had been caught up in. There was no artifice here. There was an edge of honesty to this man’s words. A rawness.
This was her fantasy. This was why no other man had ever tempted her. Why she’d never gone out of her way to pursue more than a kiss.
“And you want me?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Damn. You are drunk.”
“I am,” he said, “but not so much that I don’t know what I want. Who I want.”
“We don’t know each other,” she said.
“I know. But in some ways, doesn’t that make it better?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never...” She started to say she’d never been with a man, one she knew or not, but she let it trail off. A twenty-six-year-old virgin was a bit of a joke and she wasn’t exactly in the mood to confess that.
Besides, it might scare him off. And she hadn’t decided if she wanted to do that or not.
One thing was for sure: she didn’t want him to think that because she’d never been with a man, she needed some sort of gentle, soothing seduction.
That was the last thing she wanted. She wanted those strong hands on her. Rough. In control.
“Me neither,” he said.
“You haven’t what?” she asked. Because he wasn’t a virgin. That was for sure.
“I don’t do this kind of thing. Pick up women I meet in corridors. I have relationships. I take a woman out to dinner at least three times before I make a move toward the bedroom.”
“That’s very courteous of you.”
“Isn’t it?”
“And what about right now?”
“Right now? I’m thinking I don’t want to take you out to dinner three times. I want to take you against the wall. Now.”
His words hit those dark places inside of her. Called to needs she had that she’d never given voice to. Something in her sensed that he could give her what she wanted. Sensed that he would know what it was she wanted, everything she’d never given voice to. Things she’d never even let herself think.
“That would be...” Incredible. And she didn’t know why she was sure about that, only that she was. “Well, it would be a bad idea because anyone could walk by.”
“Danger doesn’t get you off?” he asked, leaning in, his lips a whisper from hers.
Apparently, a certain kind of danger did get her off. But not the idea of getting caught having sex for the first time in a hallway. No, that didn’t turn her on so much.
Lies.
“Danger, maybe,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “Voyeurism, not so much.”
“Not really my thing, either, I have to confess. But...I haven’t even kissed you yet and I’m not sure I can wait to get you to a hotel room.”
“You’re very sure of yourself.”
“Not of myself. Of this. You have to feel it, too. You have to.”
She did. She nodded slowly. “I think anyone who came within three feet of us would be able to feel it.”
Like the heavy lid of a well had just been moved and she suddenly had access to all of these things she’d kept in the deep darkness of her soul. Things she’d been hiding from.
Maybe it was him. Maybe it was just because her world felt rocked. Because life seemed dirtier and uglier than it ever had, with those invoices scanned into her phone. With the weight of her reality, Sarah’s reality, pressing down on her.
With the realization of what her life had become. An endless sea of numbness.
Maybe that was why this stranger
