The Hotel 2 (The Billionaire Seduction)(16)

I let the silence hang in the air.

"Ok," she says, giving up. "What's a ‘greasy pancake fuck'?"

"I'm glad you asked," I say, with a smile she can probably hear. "Well  you're single now, and soon enough you'll be dating again; seeing what  the world has to offer beyond that ex of yours  –  who sounds like a real  scumbag by the way. You'll be meeting guys, living life, and having sex.  Well, if you come over tonight, it'll be the ‘greasy pancake.'"

"The ‘greasy pancake,'" she repeats, unconvinced.

"Right. The first pancake you make of a batch, the one that's just there  to soak up all the grease. You're probably angry at your ex right now.  Maybe depressed. Maybe lost. You could spend weeks getting over him.  Flicking through the photographs, reliving the arguments in your head,  throwing out the fluffy stuffed animal he bought you for your birthday  that you thought was cute but was actually just a last-minute purchase  at the gas station."

She laughs. "It was a keychain, actually. And some wilted flowers."

"Or, you can come over here, and just fuck all of that shit away. A big  blow-out. Just let yourself loose, and cut yourself off from the past.  Mentally, emotionally."

"Physically," she adds.

"Exactly."

She pauses, and I hear her inhaling deeply as she considers my argument.

"You make it sound pretty easy."

"Because it is."

"I barely know you though. We've spoken for  –  what, twenty minutes?"

I glance at my phone and realize, to my shock, it's been almost forty.  "What's the difference if it's twenty days? The only thing that happens  when you wait too long is you miss out. You're frustrated, I'm bored  –   the stars are aligned right now. And I like you."         

     



 

"There you go with the astrology again."

"Like you said  –  it's fate."

She sighs.

"If you feel uncomfortable at any moment," I say, "you have my  permission to kick me in the balls and run away. Just don't steal any of  my stuff, please."

I wait for what feels like years until she answers again.

"Ok. But I don't even know what you look like."

"Believe me, you won't be disappointed."

I give her directions to my house, and we break the call. I toss the  phone onto the table and lie there for a few moments, staring up at the  ceiling. Her voice is still echoing in my mind, that colorful laugh, and  the stuttering gasps. I've been called a superficial bastard many times  in my life, but if those people could see how turned on I am right now  by nothing but a disembodied voice and a snappy wit they'd retract their  statements. Ok, maybe it's still true, and maybe I'm still hoping  she'll be a knockout, but frankly, even if she isn't, I'm ready to put  in a prize-winning bedroom performance on her.

I get up and shake my limbs like a prize fighter getting ready for the  fight of his life. My balls are aching from how fucking hard she got me,  and it's all I can do to save myself for when Miss Mysterious shows up.

"Shit," I mutter to myself, as I take out a bottle of nice wine and some glasses, "what if she doesn't even show up?"

I stamp the thought all the way into the back of my mind  –  like I do  most things these days  –  and jog on up to the second floor to change.

I get dressed, comb my hair, and go back downstairs. I put a little  music on in the den, something slow, but edgy  –  none of that sugary  shit. I like a little dirt in my music. Then I proceed to walk around  the room, checking my watch as I pace like I'm scared of getting stood  up in my own home.

I stop as soon as I hear a sound, not sure if it's real, and too  involved in my own imagination to hear it properly. Was that a car door  slamming? I hear footsteps on my porch.

And there goes the fucking doorbell.



Dylan and Gemma's sexy adventure continues in BOOTYCALL: PART ONE

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Discover the Sexy Bastard series: five friends, one bar, and a whole lot of trouble. From Eve Jagger  –  out now!





HARD




RYDER



CH. 1



There are two smells in the world I love more than any others: a woman  right before sex and this warehouse right before a fight. They're  different, of course. There's nothing like a naked, wet, waiting woman,  the scent of her skin salty with sweat but sweet at the same time, like  swimming through an ocean of roses. The warehouse's odor is far less  pleasurable, phantoms of last round's knocked-out teeth, bruised faces,  and aching bones making the air heavy, grimy, stifling, like the smell  of fresh dirt. But both are thrilling and unpredictable and make me want  to explode.

Even when it was me in the ring a few years ago, my ribs about to get  punched, my knuckles about to crash into someone's cheekbone, the smell  of this place would intoxicate me. Facing off with a guy whose sole  intention for the next several minutes is to pummel you into submission  is as terrifying as it sounds. And as exhilarating. The policy of  bare-knuckles brawls is no shirt, no shoes, big problem standing right  across from you. But all I had to do to calm myself was take a big  inhale of this warehouse air, let the molecules seep into my lungs, into  my bloodstream, and I won every match.

I always win.

So tonight, after Crutcher beats Miller in an upset, a big win for me  for sure, when Tyler tells me that some kid is in for $10,000 and has  disappeared, I tell him he's got to have it wrong. "I would never have  let Jamie McEntire run up that kind of tab," I say. "I've seen him  around. I wouldn't give him ten dollars, let alone ten thousand." When I  took over running fight night two years ago, I did a little cleanup  from the mess my predecessor left. No five- or six- figure debts to  people we don't know, no credit to anyone who's welched more than once.  We may be an underground operation, but there are standards. There's  also a dress code: women in heels, men in collared shirts, and our crowd  is the type who likes to drop a lot of money on both. We have security  guards. The bartender will call you a cab if you get too drunk. I run a  tight ship. Even the police think so. That's why they don't hassle me.  Sometimes they even take a try in the ring.

Tyler shrugs. "It's been gradual. Losses on a couple fights, loans to  cover him," he says. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But I double  checked the ledger, and it adds up."         

     



 

"Fuck me," I say, and a blond woman in high heels and a dress so tight  she must not have exhaled all night turns toward us. She raises an  eyebrow at me, smiles like she might take me up on the offer.

And with the way she wraps her mouth around the neck of that beer  bottle, keeping her eyes locked on mine as she takes a drink, I might  just let her.

Tyler's voice yanks me back to the problem at hand. "So what do you want  to do?" he says. "He's offered his house as collateral."

I shake my head. "This isn't a swap meet." Sometimes people think that  just because I run an illegal fighting circuit and betting ring, I must  be dishonest or inattentive to keeping the books, or maybe just dumb. So  they try to take advantage of me occasionally. They think I won't  notice or care if they siphon a little cash or don't pay in full or  don't pay at all, that I'm just a guy who made his money beating the  shit out of strangers while debutantes and their dates made their bets.  All brawn and no brains. But they're wrong.

In the ring, I didn't mind being underestimated. It helped me win. Some  spectators think when you look like me, tall, muscular,  broad-shouldered, you won't be agile enough to dodge a right hook. So  they bet against you. They don't realize those muscles aren't just for  showing off to the female members of the crowd-not that I minded when  they noticed. Those hard biceps mean you're strong, and those washboard  abs make you quick, and it all adds up to making my bank account big.

But as the boss outside the ring, I can't have people not take me  seriously. The Armani suits I wear on fight nights look damn good on me  but they don't come cheap, so when I loan money I expect to get it back  when the handshake said I would. It's only fair. I've got a reputation  to protect, not to mention a legitimate business career to support,  owning two of Atlanta's most popular nightclubs, a cocktail lounge, and  Altitude, a bar some buddies and I run together. I got to the top flying  like a butterfly in the ring, but I stay there because I sting like a  bee outside it.

And Jamie McEntire's about to feel what I mean.

"You know where this kid's house is?" I say, clapping Tyler on the  shoulder. He nods. "Good," I say. "You're driving then. Grab Valero and  let him know that as soon as this crowd clears, we're making a visit."

Tyler leaves, and the woman in the tight dress with the lucky beer  bottle approaches. The dip of her neckline is as low as her skirt is  short. "Someone should wash your mouth out," she says.