Beautiful Stranger (Beautiful Bastard 2)

On my way out, I fixed my hair, mentally high-fived myself for putting on a rumple-free dress, and touched up my lipstick.

I walked out of the door and right into a wall of man.

We’d been close at the bar, but not this close. Not my face to his throat, the smell of him surrounding me. He didn’t smell like the men on the dance floor, awash in cologne. He just smelled clean, and like a man who did his laundry, and who also had a touch of scotch on his lips.

“Hello, Petal.”

“Hi, stranger.”

“I was watching you dance, you tiny, wild thing.”

“I saw you.” I could barely catch my breath. My legs felt wobbly, like they weren’t sure if they should collapse or go back to rhythmically bouncing across the floor. I chewed my bottom lip, suppressing a smile. “You’re such a creepster. Why didn’t you come out and dance with me?”

“Because I think you rather liked being watched instead.”

I swallowed, gaping up at him and unable to look away. I couldn’t tell what color his eyes were. At the bar I’d assumed brown. But there was something lighter gleaming here in this part of the club, just above the strobes. Greenish, yellow, something mesmerizing. Not only had I known he was watching me—and liked it—but I’d danced entirely to the fantasy of him devouring me.

“Did you imagine I was getting hard?”

I blinked. I could barely keep up with his bluntness. Had men like this always existed, who said exactly what they—and I—were thinking without sounding scary, or rude, or pushy? How did he manage it?

“Wow,” I gasped. “Were you . . . ?”

He reached down, took my hand, and pressed it firmly to where he was erect, already arching into my palm. Without thinking, I curled my fingers around him. “This is from watching me dance?”

“Are you always such a performer?”

If I hadn’t been so thunderstruck, I would have laughed. “Never.”

He studied me, the smile still in his eyes but his lips fixed into something more thoughtful. “Come home with me.”

This time I did laugh. “No.”

“Come to my car.”

“No. There is no way I’m leaving this club with you.”

He bent and pressed a small, careful kiss to my shoulder before telling me, “But I want to touch you.”

I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t want it, too. It was dark, with flashing arrhythmic lights, and music so loud it felt like it hijacked my pulse. What harm could come from one wild night? After all, Andy had so many.

I led him past the restrooms, farther down the narrow hallway, to a tiny abandoned alcove overlooking the DJ station. We were trapped at a dead end, secluded around a corner but by no means hidden. Other than the wall forming the back of the club, the rest of the space around us was open, and only a waist-high glass wall kept us from falling to the dance floor below. “Okay. Touch me over here.”

He raised an eyebrow, ran a long finger across my collarbone, from one shoulder to the other. “What exactly are you offering?”

I met those strangely backlit eyes that seemed so amused by everything around him. He looked normal, so sane for someone who followed me through a club and bluntly told me he wanted to touch me. I remembered Andy, and how rarely—outside of keeping up appearances—he ever wanted my touch, my conversation, my anything. Is this how it happened for him? A woman would pull him aside, offer herself, and he would take whatever he could before coming home to me? Meanwhile, my life had become so small I could hardly remember how I used to fill the long nights alone.

Was it greedy to want it all? A career to die for, and a crazy moment here and there?

“You’re not a psychopath, are you?”

Laughing, he bent to kiss my cheek. “You’re making me feel a touch crazy, but no, I’m not.”

“I just . . .” I started, and then looked down. I pressed my hand flat against his chest. His gray sweater was unbelievably soft—cashmere, I thought. His jeans were dark, and fit him perfectly. His black shoes were unscuffed. Everything about him was meticulous. “I only just moved here.” It seemed a fitting explanation for how much my hand was shaking against him.

“And a moment like this doesn’t feel very safe, does it?”

I shook my head. “Not at all.” But then I reached up, wrapped a hand around the back of his neck, and pulled him to me. He moved willingly, bending down and smiling just before our lips met. The kiss was both the perfect kind of soft and the perfect kind of hard, with the scotch warming his lips against mine. He groaned a little when I opened my mouth and let him in, and the vibration set me on fire. I wanted to feel every one of his sounds.

“You taste like sugar. What’s your name?” he asked.

With that, I felt my first real pulse of panic. “No names.”

He pulled back to look at me, eyebrows inching up. “What’ll I call you?”

“What you’ve been calling me.”

“Petal?”

I nodded.

“And what’ll you call me when you’re about to come?” He gave me another small kiss.

My heart jerked hard in my chest at the thought. “I don’t think it matters what I call you, does it?”

Shrugging, he conceded, “I don’t suppose so.”

I took his hand, brought it to my hip. “I’ve been the only person to give myself an orgasm for the past year.” Moving his fingers to the edge of my dress, I whispered, “Can you change that?”

I could feel his smile against my mouth when he bent to kiss me again. “You’re serious.”

The idea of giving myself to this man in this dark corner scared me a little, though not enough to change my mind. “I’m serious.”

“You’re trouble.”

“I promise you, I’m not.”

He pulled back just enough to examine my eyes. Back and forth his gaze moved until his eyes curved into that amused smile. “The fact that you have no idea how you come off . . .”

He turned me, pressed my front to the edge of the glass wall so I was looking over the balcony at the mass of churning bodies below. Strobe lights pulsed down from iron beams that extended across the club just in front of me, lighting the floor beneath while keeping our upstairs corner virtually black. Steam began to blow up from vents in the dance floor, covering the partiers up to their shoulders; waves broke out in the surface as they moved through it.

My stranger’s fingertips teased at the back edge of my dress, and then he lifted it, slid a hand down the back of my underwear, over my backside and between my legs to where I positively ached for him. Even the vulnerable position didn’t embarrass me as I arched back into his hand, already lost.