With the same hand that had produced the key, he flicked at the edge of my cardigan. It slipped down my arm and caught on my hand.
Con’s mouth dipped and followed the path from my shoulder, his lips and tongue tracing my collarbone, stopping to tilt my head up and kiss a line up my neck to my chin. He ghosted past my lips and followed my jawline up to my ear. He paused and whispered, “Did you stop?”
“What?” I breathed, dying for him to continue his lazy journey.
“Good girl.”
I coughed out a small laugh when I realized that I had indeed stopped thinking. At least stopped thinking beyond where Con’s lips and tongue would touch me next.
I smiled, and that was when he finally kissed me.
His lips took mine. One hand held my jaw, tilting my head back, and the other hand dropped from the door to grip my hip, holding me against him. I moaned as he angled my head to fit his mouth against mine, tongue diving inside, dueling with mine. My hands couldn’t be still, they needed to touch, to participate. I shook off the other shoulder of my cardigan and let it drop before I reached up and buried my fingers in his shaggy blond hair. Con groaned and his hand moved to my ass, gripping it, kneading it, and pulling me in against him.
The hard ridge of his erection pressed against my stomach, and I shifted closer, wanting to feel more. Wanting to feel everything.
Con released my lips, before skimming along my jaw, to my ear, and then down my neck. Almost an inverse of the path he’d taken before—and this one didn’t allow for thinking either. When he nipped along my collarbone, the strap of my dress slipped down my arm. I expected him to seize the advantage and brush the other strap away, but instead he pulled it back into place and stepped away.
His chest heaved, and my breathing was just as unsteady. I sagged back against the door.
“Why’d you stop?”
“I gotta know you want this too. Need to hear you say it. I don’t want to watch you run from me again because you decide this is more than you can handle.” His tone was edged with raw honesty.
My brain had finally kick-started back into reality. All the thinking was back.
“What if I say no? Then where do we stand?” I asked.
He jammed his hands in his pockets. “I guess we go our separate ways.”
“What about our deal?” I pressed.
Con hung his head, and his chuckle was humorless. “Guess that would mean I got my shot and blew it.”
“You’d still give me the deed?”
He jerked his head up, his eyes pinning me in place. He opened his mouth to respond, but I reached out and pressed three fingers to his lips. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. I don’t need to know.” I took a deep breath. “Because I’m not saying no. I’m saying yes. I want this.”
Con released a long breath, and the giddiness I felt at his relief quelled the feeling that I’d just made a decision that would impact the rest of my life.
I dropped my fingers from his lips, and he caught my hand and pressed a kiss to the center of my palm. It wasn’t the kind of gesture you’d expect from Con, but having seen him at his smoothest once before, it didn’t throw me.
“So you’re willing to jump without looking again?”
Staring up into his fallen angel face, I knew I didn’t have a choice.
“Yes.”
The back booth of Tassel was supposed to be my information trafficking hot spot, and most nights when I left Voodoo and dragged my ass over here, it was. But tonight it had turned into something else completely—a place for too goddamn much introspection. After Vanessa and I had left the rooftop—separately—I hadn’t wanted to go home to my empty bed. So here I was.
What the fuck am I doing?
She wasn’t for me. I’d drag her into the gutter and dirty her pristine, lily-white reputation—and her life.
I stared down at my hands. One flat on the table and the other wrapped around a double shot of Wild Turkey.
Those hands had no business touching a woman like Vanessa.
I lifted the glass and sucked down the bourbon.
Not even liquor could burn away my need to bury my hands in her hair, slide them up and down her silky-smooth legs while I spread them wide and feasted on what my imagination had decided was the sweetest pussy I’d ever tasted.
I smacked the glass back down on the table. Drinking surely wasn’t going to help. If I hadn’t been so wasted that night, I wouldn’t have spent the last two years wondering if my imagination was right.
Those kinds of thoughts could wreck a man.
A dancer—a new girl—with dark skin, golden brown eyes, and velvety black curls sat down in the booth across from me. Normally, if a girl was going to attempt to get my attention, she made herself right at home on my lap. Not that it’d do any good lately, because unless you were a smoking hot society princess, my dick wasn’t having it. But still, this chick wasn’t even trying, which had my radar pinging.
If the girls were allowed to drink on shift, I would’ve offered to share, but given that I’d already ordered a half dozen or so to be fired for the offense, it didn’t seem quite fair.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
It was late, and I was ready to head home and escape from thoughts of Vanessa.
“Heard you’re looking for information.”
Her long eyelashes were fake and tipped with gold glitter, and she fixed her gaze on the table.
“I might be,” I replied.
The gold tassels hanging off her tits barely covered her wide nipples. She looked to be all of about twenty years old. I felt like an old man sitting across from her.