Suddenly, he felt like a heel. He didn’t like the thought of Meredith being disappointed in him, either. He hadn’t always been so cold, but it was a necessity in the cutthroat world of fashion.
Nice guys finished last. And they didn’t manage hostile mergers or win CEO spots away from their conniving sisters.
She strangled over a disgusted sound and leaned in, indignation sweeping through her expression. “There you go again. This marriage is not all my fault. You stood in front of that Elvis impersonator with me. You. I didn’t drag you to the altar. If I recall, it was your idea.”
He stepped back, away from her prodding finger, away from her anger and, most important, away from the truth. “Yeah, I can man up and admit it. I made a mistake in the heat of the moment.”
She advanced on him again, charging into the space he’d created and bringing her sensual onslaught with her. “I’ll say. And that moment was smoking hot. You can pretend that this—” she waved stiff fingers in a circle around Jason’s tuxedoed torso “—is the place you were trying to get to, but I know the real you. The one you hide under this rigid CEO exterior. The man under there doesn’t have a problem acknowledging his passion. He owns it, takes what he wants. That’s the man I spent two years dreaming about.”
Mesmerized, he watched the flicker in Meredith’s gaze flare into something far hotter than any sane man should touch.
“Yeah? What do you dream about?”
That had not been what he’d meant to say. He cleared his throat, but it was too late. It was already out there.
“Your mouth.” She reached up and traced it with her index finger, and his flesh sparked under her touch. “Your abs. The way you sigh after you come. The way my fingers look in your hair when you’re under me.”
Her fingers wound through his hair in a full-on demonstration. His body strained to close the small gap between them, begging to feel her one last time.
She was trying to goad him into losing his careful guard. It wasn’t going to work. “I thought you didn’t want to complicate this with sex.”
“It’s already so complicated it couldn’t get much worse.” Her smile turned wicked. “And I said that before you chased me back to my hotel room. Are you sure you know what you want?”
The smartest thing to do would be to keep his mouth shut. Because she’d called it—his middle name should be Mixed Signals. “Yeah. I know exactly what I want.”
“Me, too. I want that man,” she murmured. “Inside and out. I want to know it wasn’t all a lie, that I don’t misremember how amazing we were together. I want you inside me and to be so far from disappointed, I forget the meaning of the word.”
The undisguised longing in her voice, in her touch, found the answering longing inside him. He hadn’t realized it was there, waiting for her to unearth it, but it flared to life nonetheless. And in that moment, he wanted to give her what she wanted, to erase her disillusionment and embrace the devil-may-care Jason of Vegas again.
Would it really be so bad to indulge in a few hours of Meredith, burn it out of their systems and go back to real life tomorrow?
Yes, it would. Because he wasn’t that man she remembered. That wasn’t the real Jason Lynhurst. He’d only dabbled on the wild side because he’d been so messed up. Only that unique combination of confusion and Meredith could have enticed him to act so unlike himself and so much like his father.
Meredith’s odd sway over him would only intensify if he gave in now. There would be no going back to real life once he tasted her particular brand of recklessness again. And then she’d use every bit of his weakness to her advantage. That he could never allow—he had a vision for the future of Lynhurst Enterprises and it did not involve Meredith. It would be unfair to her to let her believe he could be the man she seemed to want.
“It was a lie,” he said. “You misremember. We can never get Vegas back and it would be madness to try.”
He nearly choked on the words and immediately wished he’d said something else, anything else. Because he knew good and well it wasn’t a lie and she didn’t misremember.
Worst of all, he wanted it, too. Wanted to indulge in a woman who made him feel, made him forget. An oasis of connection and understanding far removed from the ugly battles playing out across the remnants of Lynhurst Enterprises.
She banked the hurt in her gaze and nodded. “See ya. Don’t call me. I’ll call you.”
* * *
Meredith gave up on the idea of sleeping at around 2:00 a.m. Tomorrow—correction, today—already promised to be brutal since she’d spend hours in Allo’s torture chamber. But coupled with no sleep and Jason’s thorough rejection, she might as well get on a plane back to Houston.