One Night to Risk It All Read online

  And all that over three words. She was doomed if she did anything other than walk away.

  But she didn’t. She stayed rooted to the spot.

  “Um...I was...I was just there,” she gestured back to the wall where she’d been standing with Alana, who was now absent. “And I saw you.”

  “You saw me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was there a problem?”

  “I...” she said, stumbling over her words. “Not a problem, no. I just noticed you.”

  “Is that all?”

  He put his foot up on the metal railing that surrounded the deck then jumped down onto the dock, the motion fluid, shocking and...darn hot.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s all.”

  “Your name?”

  “Rachel Holt.”

  She waited. For recognition to flash through his eyes. For him to get excited at being in front of someone who had a certain level of media fame. Or for him to turn away. People did one of those two things. Rarely anything else.

  But there was no recognition. Nothing.

  “Well, Rachel,” he said, that voice a rush of liquid that pooled low in her body, “what is it you noticed about me?”

  “That, um...you were hot,” she said. She’d never been so forward with a man in her life. Though, honestly, she wasn’t sure if she was being forward or being an idiot. She was good with people. The consummate hostess. Everyone, even the vicious press, liked her. A reputation that had been carefully cultivated—and fiercely guarded.

  But she was a lot more experienced at offering people cold beverages than she was at offering them her body.

  He arched one dark brow. “That I was hot?”

  “Yeah. Haven’t you ever had a woman come on to you before?” Her face was burning and she couldn’t blame the afternoon sun. She wasn’t supposed to be hitting on him, and yet these were the words leaving her mouth.

  Stupid mouth. Almost as stupid as her hormones.

  “Yes, but not in quite such a charming way. Did you have an end goal in mind for this?”

  “I thought...” Suddenly she did. Suddenly she wanted everything, all at once, with this stranger. Wanted to touch him, kiss him, feel his fingertips forge a trail of fire over her bare skin as he took her to levels of ecstasy she’d never believed were possible for her to want, let alone feel. “I thought we could have a drink.” A drink. A cold beverage. That was back in her comfort zone and maybe a bit smarter. Especially since she didn’t even know his name. “What’s your name?” she asked, because since she was engaging in naked fantasies about the man, it seemed polite to ask.

  “Alex,” he said.

  “Just Alex?” she asked.

  He lifted a shoulder, the muscles in his chest shifting with the motion. “Why not?”

  Why not, indeed? It wasn’t as though there was any reason for him to be anything else. Who cared what his last name was? She’d never have occasion to use it. She’d never introduce him at a party, or need to refer to him in conversation. She’d never see him after today.

  “Good point. So, a drink? Or...would your boss get mad?”

  “My boss?”

  “The owner of the yacht.”

  He frowned and looked behind him, then back at her. “Oh. No, he’s gone up to Athens for a few days. I’m just supposed to check in on things now and again. No need to stay tied to the dock.”

  “I suppose not. You won’t float away.” She laughed, then felt immediately stupid. Like she’d regressed to being an eighteen-year-old girl rather than a twenty-eight-year-old woman. Of course, she hadn’t been giggly or ridiculous over men at eighteen. She’d learned better by then.

  Apparently all good sense and life lessons were out the window now.

  He wrinkled his nose and squinted against the sun, an oddly boyish gesture. It made her feel even warmer. “I don’t suppose. Though I have in the past.”

  “Have you?”

  “Sure. That’s how I ended up here. I spend a lot of my life floating.”

  She felt the layered meaning in his words. And in a strange way, felt like she’d heard more honest words from this stranger, this man she’d known all of five minutes, than she’d ever heard out of the man she was planning to marry.

  “So,” he said, “drink?”

  “Of course.”

  “Let me just get a shirt.” He tossed her a smile and climbed back up onto the boat. It took all of her willpower not to say “oh, no, please leave your chest bare.” She figured that would be pushing it. Especially since, no matter how much she might want him, she knew she’d never do anything about it.

  A drink was all it would ever be.

  They’d gone to the bar next and ordered a couple of sodas. She’d texted Alana to let her know everything was fine and that she wasn’t axe-murdered. But she didn’t send a text when she and Alex walked around town for hours, or when they ended up having dinner on the pier, laughing and talking over seafood and pasta. She didn’t text Alana about how he lifted his fork to her lips and let her taste his entrée, about the way their eyes had met in that moment and it had sent a snap of heat through her.

  Or when he took her to a club later that night.

  She hadn’t been to a club since she’d had to sneak in with a fake ID. Clubs like this were a hotbed of scandal and sex, and all sorts of things her father and Ajax would never have approved of. The sort of place the press would crucify her for going to.

  Alcohol, loud thumping music, sticky dance floors filled with bodies. There had been a time when she’d loved it. But not after she’d become aware of what she was inviting. Not since she realized the sort of trouble she could get herself into. Since she realized she’d been walking down a path that only had one ending, and it wasn’t a happy one.

  But just for now, she was going to put good behavior on hold. She felt secluded here, insulated by whatever magic spell Alex had cast on her the first moment she’d seen him. No one around was looking at her, expecting her to behave in a certain way. She didn’t think she was in any danger of exposing herself the way she’d done in the past.

  Somehow, with Alex, it felt exciting. It felt dangerous—a hit of adrenaline she used to crave. One she’d denied herself for far too long.

  It all did. The whole day. It was like being on a vacation from herself, and she loved it. Or maybe it was a vacation to herself, but that was a step further into the philosophical than she wanted to get.

  “This is so fun!” she shouted, trying to make her voice heard over the thumping bass.

  “You are enjoying yourself?” he asked.

  “Very.”

  He took her left hand and the touch of his skin against hers sent a lightning bolt shooting from her wrist to her core. “I have been meaning to ask about this,” he said, tilting her knuckles so that her engagement ring caught the light.

  Looking at it made her stomach crash into her toes. She didn’t want to think about that. About reality. Not at all.

  “I’m not married,” she said.

  A wicked smile curved his lips, blue eyes glittering in the dim light. “I wouldn’t have cared if you were. I would have maybe just asked how big your husband was. And if he was connected to organized crime in any way.”

  The thought of Ajax being connected to anything as sordid or exciting as organized crime was hysterically funny. He was far too staid for anything that outrageous. He was the calming, steadying influence in her life. Or at least that’s how her father saw him. And she couldn’t really imagine him mustering up any rage for Alex being here at the club with her.

  Ajax wasn’t really a club kind of guy. If she’d asked him, he would have probably waved his hands and said to have fun while he went back to sorting numbers into columns or whatever it was he did all night in his office that
gave him such satisfaction.

  “Um...you don’t need to be concerned. Besides, we haven’t done anything we should be ashamed of,” she said. “I haven’t...violated any vows.”

  “Yet,” he said, his grin turning wicked. “It’s still early.”

  “So it is,” she said, her heart thundering hard.

  “Do you want to dance?”

  She looked at his outstretched hand and she felt an ache, a need, tighten in her belly. Ajax had never once danced with her. Had never even asked. And until that moment, she hadn’t realized that she’d been missing it.

  In that same moment, she realized that this wasn’t just a request for a simple dance.

  She knew that this was it. The deciding moment. That if she said yes to this, she wouldn’t say no again for the rest of the night.

  But maybe that had been true hours ago. Maybe from the moment she’d locked eyes with him, saying no had been an impossibility.

  “Yes,” she said, the word torn from her, scraping her throat raw and leaving in its place a sweet, light relief. She had decided. Tonight she was going to embrace life, whatever that meant. “Yes, Alex, I want to dance.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  HE KISSED HER for the first time out on the dance floor. There were people all around them, the crush of bodies intense. And she let them push her into him, let them drive her against him so that she could feel the hard heat of his muscles against her chest.

  When she was pressed against him, she looked up, angled her head toward his. She knew she was begging for it and she didn’t care. Because she needed this. More than air. It didn’t matter what happened tomorrow, or in the month leading up to her wedding, not if she didn’t survive this night.

  And it felt like she might not if he didn’t touch her. If she couldn’t taste him.

  But he didn’t make her beg for long.

  He dipped his head and claimed her mouth, his tongue forcing her lips apart. She opened to him, took him in deep, kissed him until she was dizzy. There had never been a kiss like this. Not for her, maybe not for anyone. One that stole her every thought, her every worry. One that reduced her to nothing more than need, nothing more than a deep, physical ache that demanded satisfaction.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, her body moving against his, no longer in rhythm with the music, but in rhythm with her own desire. She forked her fingers through his thick, curly hair, held him against her, poured all of herself, all of the desire that had been building in her for so many years, into a kiss that she shouldn’t be having. A kiss that was forbidden to her.

  And that just made her angry. More determined to get what she needed tonight. What she would never have after tonight. This was her last chance.

  A secret thrill. A secret bit of adventure. No one ever had to know.

  “Come back to my hotel with me,” she said, against his mouth, unable to part from him for even a second.

  He didn’t answer—he only kissed her again, and she realized there was no way he’d heard her, not over the music.

  She pulled his head down and put her lips against his ear. “I have a hotel room. Come back with me.”

  That was all the encouragement he needed. Faster than she could change gears, Alex was dragging her off the dance floor and out into the warm summer night. He paused outside the club door, pushed her against the wall and kissed her, the motion and the kiss savage, explosive. Perfect. She arched into him, rubbing her breasts against the hard wall of his chest, trying to find some satisfaction for the need that was tearing through her like a beast.

  “Now,” she said, her eyes closed tight. “We have to go back now. I need... I can’t...”

  “I agree.”

  “It’s close. I think it’s close. I’m dizzy, actually. The city is sideways. It’s hard to tell where the hell we are.”

  Alex laughed and pressed his forehead against hers. “I know exactly where the hell I am.”

  “And where is that?”

  “With you. I don’t need to know anything more.”

  She exhaled sharply, tried to ignore the stab of emotion in her chest. This wasn’t supposed to make her feel. “Wow. You do say the best things. You really do.”

  He took her hand. “Lead the way.”

  She did. And somehow, right then, she felt more like herself than she ever had. Like the two halves of her life, the woman she was in public and the woman she was in private had merged together for the first time.

  She felt brave. She felt certain.

  She felt happy.

  A whisper of who she’d been before she’d learned to shut herself down. Before the Colin debacle. And blackmail. Before she’d had to face her father and tell him what she’d done. And what the fallout from it might be.

  I can’t protect you anymore, Rachel. These choices you’re making are dangerous. People, men, will always try to take advantage of you because of your connections, the press will always hunt you because of who you are, and you’re courting it. No more. If you keep on like this, I will not cover for you again. I love you too much to enable you this way.

  And less kind words from her mother. A woman in your position can’t afford these mistakes. It’s not only immoral, it’s dangerous. Think of what the press will say. About you. Us. I haven’t spent all these years helping propel us to this position in society to watch you tear it down with stupid behavior!

  Angry words spoken in private. A side of her mother only Rachel ever saw.

  But she’d taken those words, balled them up and stored them in her chest, kept them close, ever since.

  Except...except this moment.

  But it was different. It was out of time, out of the real world entirely. And Alex didn’t even know who she was. He didn’t want to use her. Didn’t want to get her into a compromising position so he could sell photographs, or a dirty video.

  Even Ajax, one of the kindest people she knew, wanted her for her name more than anything else.

  But that wasn’t Alex. Alex just wanted her.

  That simple thought pushed everything dark away from her mind. Everything in the past, everything in the future. There was just now. And now was perfect.

  They started walking down the sidewalk, then they were running, laughing. She bent and kicked her shoes off, carrying them in her free hand as she ran barefoot down the stone walk.

  They stopped in front of the hotel, the lights from the lobby casting a glow on Alex, on the fountains in front of the building. “Oh, yes,” she said, breathing heavily. “I’m in a nice hotel.”

  “So you are.” He laughed, the sound reverberating through her body.

  “Don’t feel awkward or anything.”

  “I don’t,” he said.

  Of course he wouldn’t. It was hard to imagine him feeling awkward anywhere. “Good. I need to know at least three more things about you before we go in, okay?”

  “Depends. Are you going to do a credit check?”

  “I swear not,” she said, “I won’t even fingerprint you. But...you’re a stranger, and I can’t have that.”

  “Really? And what is it that will make me not a stranger?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, and when she opened them, Alex filled her visions. “Favorite color?”

  “Don’t have one.”

  “Come on. What color is your bedspread?”

  He laughed. “Black.”

  “Okay. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six,” he said.

  “Oh.” For some reason the answer sent a little thrill through her. “Well, I’m twenty-eight, I hope that doesn’t deter you.”

  “Not in the least,” he said. “I might, in fact, be more turned on now. If such a thing is possible.”

  Her pulse kicked in
to a higher gear. “One more thing,” she said. “Would you rather...sleep under the stars, or in a beautiful suite?”

  “Either. As long as you were with me. Preferably in a state of undress.”

  The air rushed out of her lungs. “Well, that was the perfect answer.”

  “Can we go in?”

  “Yes,” she said, of course, since there was no way she was saying no now. “You aren’t a stranger now, so it’s all good.”

  “I’m glad,” he said.

  They went into the hotel and passed quickly through the lobby. She pushed the button and stood in front of the elevator, waiting, her nerves building as each second ticked by.

  As soon as they were inside, as soon as the doors closed behind them, he pushed her back against the wall, his mouth hungry on hers, his hands roaming over her curves.

  She could feel the hard press of his erection against her hip, could feel his arousal, not just there, but in every line of his body. The tense hold of his shoulders, the thundering of his heart, the urgency in his kiss.

  She’d never in her wildest fantasies imagined herself here. Like this. With a man kissing her like he was starving for her. She never imagined she would be kissing a man as though she was starving for him, in truth.

  Her past experiences included fizzy, alcohol-flavored kisses and heavy coercion. This wasn’t alcohol going to her head. Nor was it coerced. It wasn’t about rebelling against her neat and orderly life. It wasn’t about a sense of duty. It was about her.

  They were at her floor not nearly fast enough and all too quickly. Any slower, she might have died—or he might have just taken her straight to heaven with her clothes on. She was close, so close, and she knew it.

  She might not have ever considered herself overly passionate but she had a sex drive. And since Ajax was patiently waiting to take things to the next level, that meant she was an expert at satisfying that sex drive on her own.

  Orgasm she knew. But having it entirely out of her control? That was a whole different matter. She’d given Colin pleasure, but he’d never really touched her. And anyway, that was eleven years ago, and the extent of her experience with men and any sort of nudity.