“Let’s go somewhere. You and me.”
Her eyes get wide and dart to where the SUV was parked earlier. “Oh… uh…”
“Just to hang out.” I hold my hands up and put on my most innocent face. Yeah, right. Like I have an innocent face. A laugh catches in my throat. “Really, on my honor.”
She ducks her chin and giggles, the trilling sound of her laughter settling against every inch of my skin. “Oh, yeah, I saw you and your honor in full force earlier tonight.”
“I’ll keep my honor in its zipper cage. Promise.” And fuck, but for the first time in a long time, I mean it. Getting Layla naked isn’t the priority. Shocker.
“Okay, sure. Where do you want to go?”
Anywhere. As long as it’s with you.
Layla
“Oh my gosh, Blake. This is… wow.” My mouth is hanging open as we walk into the living room of Blake’s condo. Ha! Condo is a joke of a word that doesn’t do justice to this place.
The open floor plan allows me to see everything from the kitchen to the dining room to the sunken living room. Clearly lacking a woman’s touch, everything is sleek dark leather, granite, and stainless steel.
But what gives this place the wow-factor is the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the city. I drop my purse on the real leather couch—I know it’s real because I can smell it—and move across the room. Pressing my face up against the glass, the steam from my breath turns the bright twinkling lights of the Las Vegas strip into abstract watercolors.
The sound of the wall sliding open jerks my face from the window. “The glass wall opens?” I stand back and watch in fascination as the glass folds in panels, dissolving the line between inside and outside.
“It’s a nice night. Let’s sit on the patio.” He smiles, ignoring my question.
“But…” I point from floor to ceiling. “The wall just… like… poof… disappears.” Even I can hear the excitement in my voice, but who cares? This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.
With a tilt of his head, he motions for me to follow him to a set of gorgeous teak lounge chairs complete with perfectly white, overstuffed cushions. We take our separate seats. Not wanting to put my dirty shoes on the cushions, I kick off my biker boots. He doesn’t need to take his shoes off as his long legs take up the entire length of the seat, leaving his feet to hang off the end.
“How tall are you?” The question rolls off my tongue in such a casual way that I forget I’m in the home of a virtual stranger.
“Six-two.”
Wow. That’s super tall. A whole foot taller than me.
We sit in silence, our eyes cast out into the night, the cool air still and relaxing. My mind drifts, taking a reprieve from the usual crap that eats away at me daily. I lay my head back and think about how long it’s been since I’ve been this comfortable around a man. Alone. Gosh, years. And even back then I—
“I’m not into her.” Blake’s words are distant, but direct.
My face instantly heats at the reminder of what happened earlier tonight. How could I forget? Somewhere between Blake’s freak-out in the parking lot and our peaceful patio sitting, I’d pushed my embarrassing interruption from my mind. Self-preservation has me hopeful that I’d misunderstood his statement. “Into who?”
“The girl I was… the blonde. I’m not into her.” He avoids making eye contact and studies the colored lights. “It was a hook-up. That’s it.”
It was worth a try. “You don’t need to explain. It’s none of my business who you… you know.” This is so uncomfortable.
He nods a couple times then drops his head back against the cushion. “Yeah, I know. Still wanted to tell you.”
“Why?” I speak the question and grimace. Didn’t mean to say that out loud.
“Fuck if I know.” He takes this opportunity to lock his eyes with mine, and even in the dark, with the only light coming from the stars and distant exterior lighting, I can see the intensity in his emerald gaze.
Like always, when he sets his eyes on mine, I’m helpless to look away. Heat gathers beneath my skin, all over my body. My cheeks, my chest, and places a lot lower simmer and liquefy under his visual assault. He tilts his head, pressing his temple deeper into the cushion.
I reach in deep, trying to pull up the image of him in the back of the SUV. If anything can zap me back to reality, it should be that, but it’s like a dream I can’t remember. There, but fuzzy. The fire in his eyes when he towered over me in the parking lot comes back clearly. He didn’t break eye contact then, and he’s not now. I wet my lips, trying to cool my heated skin.
He takes a sharp intake of breath and looks away. “So, uh… tell me about him. Axelle’s dad.”
Talk about a mood killer. I blink a few times and return my eyes to the lights. “What do you want to know?” Hell, I already told him the worst part, and he didn’t run off screaming. Nothing to hide now.
“How’d you meet?” It’s an icebreaker question, but it sounds like he forced the words through his teeth.
“High school. He was the big guy on campus. Football all-state whatever, debate extraordinaire, student government blah, blah, blah.”
“Hm. No Pantera or Metallica worship? Doesn’t sound like your type.”
“Exactly. He’s not my type, never was. I always went for the bad boys, the dropouts and druggies. I hated guys like Stewart. Putting on an impressive show, but behind closed doors…” Memories of exactly what happened behind closed doors trickle through the cracks in my protective mental wall.
“His name is Stew.”
“Stewart. Yeah.”
“Stew.”
I nod.
“Stew Moorehead.”
The crooked smile on Blake’s face, along with the way he said Stewart’s name, strikes something deep inside. An uncontrollable giggle erupts from deep in my chest. I try to muffle it with my hand but end up snorting with laughter until I can finally reclaim myself.
He doesn’t laugh with me but grins. “So if you two were so different, how’d you end up…”
Making a baby? I finish his question in my head. “I’d just turned sixteen. Saved up for two years to put a down payment on a car. Babysitting, cleaning houses, collecting cans… you name it, I did it. Finally, I had enough money saved to get the sickest ’78 Trans-Am.”
Blake’s handsome face splits with a huge smile.
I sit up, cross-legged, and face him. “It was cobalt blue. Like something out of a Mötley Crüe video. It literally purred when I hit the gas.”
He chuckles. “I bet.”
“There was a huge party. I was crushing on Trip Miller, this shaggy-haired rocker kid.” I lean in, excitement tickling my stomach, just like it did that night, hours before my fate was sealed by my stupidity. “He was a bad-boy. You know, faded metal T-shirts, tattoos made with a straight pin and Bic ink.” I’m lost in the memory and not paying attention to Blake as I relive my past.
“I rolled up in my Trans-Am, wearing skin-tight dove grey jeans, my black monkey boots, and a Whitesnake T-shirt that I cut and shredded myself.” I laugh at how hot I thought I looked. “I knew that night would be the night I’d win over Trip.”
I’ll never forget walking in and seeing Stewart there with all his friends, drunk as hell. I should’ve turned around and gone home. But if I had, I wouldn’t have Elle.
“And did you?” Blake’s deep rumbling voice calls my eyes to his.
“No. I drank and flirted with Trip. Far as I can remember, he played hard to get.” My mind cranks back to how much I drank in an attempt to show him I was a wild-child like him. And somewhere between the beers and the shots, things got fuzzy. “I don’t remember much. Only waking up naked, a blanket thrown over my body, next to Stewart in the back of his 4Runner.”