nothing more than to go home to her one-bedroom apartment near Columbia and curl up in bed with the TV on mute and a pile of essays she had to mark. Just another typical Saturday night in the life of Louise Jensen.
Get over yourself, she thought crossly. You have a rewarding career, a lovely apartment, a small but close group of friends. There was absolutely no reason to feel sorry for herself.
Except she’d just turned down what she really wanted, and he was standing across the room. The only tempting offer of sex, of any kind of physical intimacy, she’d had in a decade.
Not that there hadn’t been other offers: a brief and unremarkable relationship with another grad student at Columbia; a blind date that had been excruciating in its awkwardness and, even more awkward, a pass made by Pete, the neighbor who had looked after her cat when she’d gone to San Diego to present a paper on women’s changing roles in the workplace.
Louise had thought he’d been inviting her in to retrieve Mallow’s litter box. He’d tried to pull her into a clumsy embrace while she’d been going for the box and the result hadn’t been pretty. Cat litter and kisses didn’t go so well together. Neither had she and Pete.
Sighing, she decided it was time to call it a night.
She caught Chelsea’s eye from across the room and waved a farewell; her sister made an apologetic face and waved back. She got it, Louise knew, and she wouldn’t try to cajole her into staying a little longer.
Louise handed her ticket to the young woman behind the coat check, slid her arms into the sleeves of her black wool trench coat. It was April, but there was still a nip in the night air.
In the lift down to the lobby she pulled out her phone and for curiosity’s sake—that ship had sailed, after all—she did an internet search for Jaiven Rodriguez. Half a million websites immediately came up, and she soon saw why: Jaiven Rodriguez was the founder and CEO of JR Shipping, one of the largest delivery services in the world. No wonder his name had sounded familiar.
And you could have had him in bed.
With a shake of her head she slipped her phone into her pocket and stepped outside the Plaza Hotel, breathed in the smell of New York: taxi fumes and litter and that inexplicable, muggy steam that rose from the subway grates, and over it all the damp freshness of a wet spring night. She dug her hands into her pockets and started across the Grand Army Plaza toward the park. She’d walk for a little bit, she decided, and clear her head.
She’d just crossed Fifty-Ninth Street and was turning left toward Sixth Avenue when she heard the sputter of a motorbike behind her. She tensed, because it was night in New York and she was a woman alone; instinctively she reached into her pocket for the small can of pepper spray she kept attached to her key chain.
The sputtering stopped, and a voice rumbled out her name. “Louise.”
Slowly she turned. Jaiven Rodriguez eased off his helmet as he smiled at her with such knowledge, such assurance. If Jaiven Rodgriguez at a party had been hard to resist, then the man on a motorbike was damn near impossible.
You don’t like bad boys, she reminded herself. You have had way too much experience with one in particular to make this remotely appealing.
Too bad her brain wasn’t listening. Although in actuality it wasn’t her brain that was responding to Jaiven. It was her body, and her body was saying yes.
Yes, take what he’s offering and go with it for a night. When was the last time she’d been so much as touched? Accepting a parcel from her postman did not count.
And at least a night with Jaiven Rodriguez would not engage her emotions. No chance of a relationship with this bad boy. No possibility of falling in love. No danger of getting hurt.
Just a basic and overwhelming need finally, wonderfully met.
“Party over?” Jaiven asked, and Louise heard that rich, velvety note of laughter in his voice. She was staring, she realized belatedly. Again.
“Not quite. But I was ready for bed.”
Her whole body tensed in mortification as Jaiven gave her one of his toe-curling smiles. “Good. So am I.”
She stared him down. Almost. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”
He arched one dark eyebrow. “Didn’t you?”
Hell, maybe she had. Maybe her body was staging a coup over her brain. Resistance was futile.
Still her brain attempted one last feeble attack. “I told you that caveman thing was not attractive, right?”
“Do you see me dragging you onto this bike?”
No, the trouble was she’d get on it, just as she had once before. She’d take whatever a man dished out and ask for more.
Whoa. Jaiven was not Jack. And a one-night stand was not a marriage.
Still… Could she seriously be thinking about this? Getting on a bike with a stranger? God knows where he’d take her. He could strangle her in an alleyway and dump her body in the Hudson River.
The fact that he was a well-known, multimillionaire entrepreneur made that a little more unlikely, but only just.
And yet she was still thinking about it. Maybe it was the knowledge that Chelsea had found some happiness, so she wanted to grab a little for herself. Maybe it was just five years, or really a lifetime, of sexual starvation. Maybe it was this man, looking at her with both assurance and hunger.
She folded her arms, eyed him coolly. “If I get on that bike, you know where this is going, right?”
“A nice hotel on Forty-Sixth Street I know?”
She swallowed. A hotel. It sounded so sordid. But also safe. “And that’s it.”
“You’re talking my language.”
She laughed then, shook her head in disbelief. Was she actually warning Jaiven that she didn’t want a relationship? Talk about unnecessary.
“In any case, though,” Jaiven said in that slow, sexy rumble of a voice, “you can’t get on my bike. I only have one helmet.” She must have looked disbelieving because he chuckled softly. “I ride safe, and I mean that in all sorts of ways.”
“Nice.”
“Glad you think so.”
They stared at each other, the moment spinning out so Louise felt breathless. Her mind emptied of thoughts and her heart started to thud. She really was thinking about doing this. Hot sex with a stranger.
A little voice in her head, a voice that she’d been trying to silence for ten years, whispered that this was a bad idea. She didn’t trust men, not with her heart and not with her body. She wouldn’t be able to stand it if he ended up humiliating her, rejecting her. She could not bear to feel that way again, not for so much as five seconds.
She took a step backward.
“Looks like it’s not going to work out.”
“You
