“We worked through it,” she said. “It was a long time ago. My point is that it’s my turn.” More bar pounding. “My turn. And, conveniently, I find myself suddenly single.” She got up and moved over a stool, leaving an empty one between them as she surveyed the bar again. “Stop cramping my style.”
“I can’t argue with your logic, but you’re drunk.” And ten minutes ago, you were sobbing. “You can’t trust these guys. These are bankers, stockbrokers.”
She aimed a megawatt smile at one of the bankers in question as she answered him under her breath. “So bankers aren’t as trustworthy as, say, doctors? Or software CEOs? Is that what you’re saying?”
He moved over onto the empty stool. “I’m saying that if you’re looking for a hookup, you need someone you can trust. And you can’t trust these guys, not with your judgment impaired.”
She swiveled, a finger raised, which he assumed she was going to shake at him. Instead, she froze with it aloft. “You’re right.” She tilted her head as if pondering a great riddle. “Who can I trust? That is a very good question.” Scrunching up her nose, she said, “I’m going through my mental Rolodex of male acquaintances here. Unfortunately, they’re all either from the office or they’re Mason’s friends.”
“You can trust me,” he said, meaning you can trust me to protect your goddamn virtue and get you out of this pit of vultures intact.
That, apparently, was not what she heard, though, because the finger was back, and this time it landed squarely in the middle of his chest. “Yes,” she said, a slow Cheshire Cat smile blossoming.
The single syllable sped up his heart and caused him to hold his hands up like she was mugging him. Holy shit, she was drunker than he’d realized. Of course, he thought about having sex with Amy Morrison pretty much every time they had a conversation—or, more accurately, a fight. He assumed that was normal. She had that effect on human males. But the sight of her outright offering herself to him, the idea of those red lips beneath his own—Jesus Christ, it was almost too much to bear. “No, no,” he said. “That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s perfect, though!” she exclaimed, slurring a little. “You’re a total womanizer, and we pretty much hate each other, so it’s not like it’s going to get weird the morning after.” She threw her head back and laughed. “And it’s not like I’m in any danger of doing what I did with Mason, imagining a whole future, naming our grandkids and all that.” Then her laughter stopped abruptly as she sought his eyes in the mirror behind the bar. “You’re the opposite of Mason. The antidote.” When he didn’t say anything, she floated her hand over and rested it on his forearm, her gaze still locked on his in the mirror. “Take me home and make love to me, Dax.”
His arm was on fire under her hand. Turing the tables on her, he shook off her hand and grabbed it with his own, pressing it down on the bar. Without breaking their eye contact in the mirror, he leaned over to whisper in her ear. “I don’t make love, sweetheart. I fuck. If I take you home, I’ll fuck the living daylights out of you in a way I guarantee Mason never has. You won’t even remember his name when I’m through with you.”
Chapter Three
Dax wasn’t planning on making good on his threat. Apparently he’d grown a conscience when it came to Amy. Who knew? A week ago he had “forgotten” to tell her about the Lakefront Centre’s annual fire drill. When everyone else had vacated in advance on the elevators, she’d had to walk down forty-nine floors in her heels. Yet now he was, apparently, her goddamned protector. Because although she would never believe it, he did have some principles. Well, one: consent was essential, and since consent couldn’t reliably be given when under the influence, he made it a practice to deflect the advances of any woman more than a little tipsy.
Still, there were usually plenty of suitably sober alternate candidates if he was in a bar doing his principled deflection, so if he was looking for companionship, he generally found it. So taking a girl home and planning not to fuck her? Especially one who, as she doggedly snuggled against him in the cab, rubbing her bare legs all over his jeans, was so eminently fuckable? This was new territory. Which was why, instead of taking Amy to his condo, which was just a few blocks from the Lakefront Centre, they had cabbed to the ferry docks. In addition to taking a lot longer, the boat portion of the trip would cool them both off. Even in the heat of summer, the evening air on the lake was chilled.