I stare her down as I finish eating, then I reach for my coffee. The staring contest continues as we finish our drinks, then I sit back and sigh. “Fine, you’ve got my full attention. Why me?”
“You’re hot.”
“Try harder.”
“You’re a good guy.” Not even a little bit. I snort, but she waves me off. "I've been watching you. You're good with Hailey—you get her. You see our fucked-up family and how screwed up our relationships are and you help smooth it over for her when she needs to bounce, or not show up at all."
"That's the job."
She shakes her head. "No. I've grown up around guys like you. Everyone has an angle. Nobody just does the job, no questions asked."
That makes me so mad at her father, who is a grade-A scum, and her mother, who has no moral compass that I am aware of. "They should."
"They don't. But you do.” She holds my gaze, daring me to tell her she’s wrong. She’s not, because yeah, I’m good at my job. She licks her lips. “And you want me.”
“No—”
“Don't deny it, not on my birthday. You want me," she repeats in a quick, staccato burst of nerves. "And you are a good guy, and I want this. I want you to have sex with me, because you're a good guy and you're hot and you want me. I want you too, in case that wasn't clear. But just for sex. I'm not—"
"Whoa. Slow down." If I ever thought Hailey was the earnest one, it was only because I hadn't had a conversation like this with Ali yet.
A dangerous, addictive conversation where her eyes are bright and her chest is rising and falling and her words have me so hard it hurts.
I don't want to like her. I don't want to think of her as Ali or know that she's lonely.
I definitely don't want to be a red blooded man with the knowledge that she's turned on and willing—eager, even—but picky.
And she's picked me because she thinks I'm a good guy.
“I do want you. Any man would, and I’m flattered that you think I’m good enough for you. But you don’t really know me, and if you did, you wouldn’t want me. I’m not the guy you think I am.”
“Okay, scratch the good guy stuff. I don’t think the details of that matter for a one-night stand. What matters is that you wouldn’t kiss-and-tell, that I can trust you not to hurt me, that you’ll wear a condom, that kind of thing.”
“That’s not being a good guy, Ali, that’s just…Jesus, don’t have sex with anyone…fuck that, don’t have lunch with anyone who doesn’t think those are the most basic ground rules.”
“I haven’t.”
“Good.” I glare at her. “But the answer is still no.”
Her lower lip stiffens and she drops her gaze to the cupcakes. Silently, she closes up the box and stands, carrying them to the small kitchenette near the window.
I stand as well. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” I offer lamely. “You’re gorgeous.”
She doesn’t say anything.
When I was a SEAL, we practiced surviving torture techniques way more complicated than the silent treatment from a beautiful woman. Even Maddie never successfully managed to guilt me by giving me the cold shoulder.
But tonight—fuck, it’s her birthday. And I’m breaking her heart. I stand in the middle of the room, ready to take the hits when she turns around. I deserve them.
“You break every single one of my rules,” I say quietly. “And I definitely don’t seduce women young enough to be my—”
She whirls around. “I am not… whatever you were about to say, I am not that much younger than you.”
“I’m thirty-five.”
She blinks at me. “Well…okay. You’re older than I thought. I won’t hold that against you.”
“That doesn’t mean that I can’t hold it against me. And I would. I do. There’s no part of me that isn’t anxious about the fact that you’re twenty.”
She looks at my dick again. Fine. There’s one part that has zero problem with the fact that she’s barely legal. He twitches. More than okay with that fact.
“Another reason this is against the rules,” I say drily. “I’m a dirty old man.”
“I gotta say, banging my sister’s bodyguard is part of the appeal. So if you keep underlining the forbidden aspect of why we can’t, that’s just going to convince me that we should.”
“I’m not convincing you of anything. I’m just stating how it is.” To show her that I’m not getting into a confrontation over it, and that I’m totally fine with drawing that boundary—and no, I don’t need to run away to my room like a scared little boy—I take the armchair, which seems wise until she sighs and moves closer.
I walked right into that trap. Cole and Jason would be howling at me right now, because I’m cornered between a determined, sexy woman and the wall. Rookie mistake, and I’m no rookie.
“You’ve got rules,” she whispers, her lips twisting in a smirk. “And you think I can’t play within them?”
Alarm bells clang inside my head. “Something like that.”
“You wanna tell me what these rules are?”
“Nope. I want you to go to bed.”
“Tuck me in.”
“Not going to happen.”
“It’s my birthday.”
I need to get up and walk away from her. I try. I stand up, and she moves back. I need to walk past her and into my own room, tell her I’ll see her in the morning and close the door. But then she sighs and turns around, her long, honey-brown waves spilling down her back as she glances at me over her shoulder.
“If you won’t come tuck me in, the least you could do is unzip my dress.” She walks a few feet away from me, giving me lots of space.
I clear my throat. “You got into it, you can get yourself out of it.”
“I had Hailey’s help, actually. But okay. Hmmm.” She twists her arms behind her back—fuck, how is she that bendy? This is not good for my control. Her fingertips snag her zipper and she tugs, revealing a widening triangle of skin. Not the bra she flaunted earlier.
No bra at all.
Fuck me, because now all I can think about is the question, is she wearing those panties?
Is she wearing anything under that dress?
“Don’t jerk me around, Ali.” My voice is strained. I’m close to snapping. I don’t want her to know it’s really that I’m close to breaking, so I let her think I’m straight-up angry about the tease.
Truth is, I’m not sure she realizes just how far she’s pushing me. Something she said earlier has been bugging me.
Here’s to another year of bodyguard-enforced virginity.
She’s hot as fuck, and she’s been in college for almost three years.
No way is she still a virgin.
I haven’t.
“I’m not…” She sighs and turns around, and she’s gorgeous and sexy and totally innocent as she gives me a helpless little shoulder shrug. “Okay. I guess I’m pushing you hard. I’m sorry.”
God damn it. I scrub my hand over my face. “I don’t get involved with clients, or the family of clients. I don’t do high-profile relationships. I don’t have one-night stands.” The words drill out of me, slamming against her. “And those are just three of the reasons why this can’t happen. What else? Did you think about what happens when you wake up from this hormone-driven fun-fest?”
Her face slacks. She looks stricken. I’m an asshole.
“Maybe you aren’t thinking of the consequences. Maybe you can’t imagine them yet, but there are adult—”
“Stop calling me a child.”
“Stop acting like one.” I sigh as that hangs between us, harsher than it needs to be. And it’s not really true. “I’m the last person to romanticize sex, believe me, but—”
“Then don’t,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. Her dress is still unzipped behind her, and the straps are all loose and wobbly. I watch as one shifts to the outer edge of her shoulder. Another blithe shrug and it would drop down her arm, baring the top of her breast. “Don’t romanticize anything. Clearly I haven’t done a good enough job of making it clear that I’m just looking for a safe hook-up.”
“I told you. I don’t do casual hook-ups, so you’re out of luck.”
She frowns, her lower lip plumping out in a way that says, taste me, asshole. Taste me and then tell me you don’t want me. “What do you do?”
“All due respect, Ms. Reid, that’s not really your business.”
“Your hard-on says it is.” She recrosses her arms, loosening her hold on her dress. It slips a bit.
“He’s a liar.” Go to bed, I growl in my head, but somehow it doesn’t come out like I want it to. It doesn’t come out at all. I look away because I can’t stop staring at that bare bit of her chest, hungry for more. “And we need to stop talking about sex.”
“I would’ve thought your rule was that you always had to be in charge,” she whispered, and I snap my head back to her. Her words pull me closer. I can barely hear her, and I swear she drops her voice as I get within touching distance. I’m losing this battle, I realize with a start. I’ve been having this whole conversation thinking I’ve got a handle on the situation, but right now? I’m right where she wants me.