Sloane rested her elbows on the bar and cupped her chin. “Don’t listen to the tall, dark lord of the underworld. I’d love another dirty martini.”
The bartender’s eyes skated to me again. I shook my head.
“Sorry, Sloane. Boss won’t let me,” he said and disappeared down the bar.
She spun around on her stool. “The boss? You own this place?”
I couldn’t focus on her words. Only her mouth. Those red-slicked lips that had tortured and taunted me for years.
“Are you here with someone?” I demanded, drawing out the stool next to hers and sitting.
“I was about to be until you went all you on my starting line.”
I closed my eyes. She wasn’t here on a date. She was here to get laid. One night. One night, and we could put this all behind us finally.
“You’re not picking up a stranger in my hotel.”
Her spine straightened and she lifted her glass. Her nails were painted a sparkly purple. She wore a trio of bracelets on her right wrist and dangling earrings that danced when she moved.
“Fine,” she said. She drained the last of her martini and set the glass down on the bar. “I’ll pick one up someplace else.”
She shifted on her stool to turn away from me, but I was faster.
I gripped the suede cushion between her parted thighs and dragged her closer.
The little gasp that escaped her lips had my cock stirring. We both stared down at my hand she was now straddling. The hem of her dress tickled my thumb. Her smooth, bare thighs caressed the sides of my fist. I could feel the heat from her core.
I pulled the stool even closer until her legs slid between my own. An inch. Maybe two. That was all that separated the heel of my hand from the heat of her core.
“Have you lost your already addled mind?” she hissed.
But she didn’t push me away, didn’t slap me like I deserved. No, the woman put here on this earth with the sole purpose of irritating me spread her thighs ever so slightly wider.
It was a trap. I was sure of it.
“Probably,” I admitted. I signaled the bartender for another round. The poor kid looked moderately scared.
The feel of her caged between my legs was intoxicating. It had been a stupid move designed to get a rise out of her, yet I was the one with a stone-hard erection and elevated heart rate.
“Can’t you just go back to your evil lair and forget we ran into each other?” she asked.
Go home with the knowledge that she was picking out a lover and taking him back to her hotel room? That she was undressing for him, letting him see things I’d never earned the right to see? Letting him touch places I could only dream of?
Her breasts rose against the confines of her dress. There was nothing subtle about the view the square neckline provided.
“Why are you here?” I demanded again.
“To get laid, and you’re really messing with my mojo.”
My jaw tightened.
“Go ahead. Say something so I can give you the sex-shaming lecture before I kick you in the balls,” she challenged.
It was a legitimate threat. If she moved forward, her knees would be within striking distance.
“I thought you were getting serious about…dating,” I said.
She shrugged and the motion drew my attention back to her cleavage. My cock throbbed painfully against my zipper.
“I was. I am,” she corrected. “I just haven’t met anyone worth dating, let alone anyone I’d let give me a few orgasms. So here I am. Sex is a good stress reliever.”
“So you’re just going to pick up a complete stranger and let him touch you?”
“You do not get to judge, Rollins. I’m willing to bet you’ve had more than your fair share of uncomplicated one-night stands.”
“I’m not judging,” I lied.
She peered over my shoulder at a man ordering a beer, and my grip tightened on her stool. “No,” I said.
“You need to back off or I’m going to end up wasting a night in a hotel room with my vibrator.”
Spots danced before my eyes.
She squirmed almost imperceptibly on the stool. The movement brought her forward, giving my hand a brush of hot satin just as her knee settled against the ridge of my dick.
Fuck.
Those green eyes widened, her ruby lips parted, and there was no mistaking the quickening of her breath. Hot, damp flesh taunted me from the other side of her fuck-me underwear.
I was tired of fighting. Tired of fighting with her. Tired of fighting my baser desires. It was self-destructive to want the only woman who had shattered my life. Who’d broken my trust. Who had landed me behind bars and very nearly ruined my life before it had even begun.