Page 23 of Cocky Player

“I thought about it, wanted to check in on you, but I also left that ball in your court.”A slow arch of his brows put me in my place.

“I didn’t know what to say.”

“Thank you?Want some dinner?Want to hang out?Join me for a drink?All are perfectly acceptable options as well as ‘Hey, thinking of you.’”

I laughed softly.Perhaps I’d looked far more into this than he was.“I’m out of my element here, with you…with this.”I circled my hand in the air in a gesture that made him grin.“Forgive me?”

“Only if I can see you tonight.”He leaned closer, dropped his head and his voice to that beautiful, sexy low hum scrambling my brain.

“What?”

“It appears,” Connor said, and damn him and his sexy lips that quirked up at one corner as his gaze traveled over my face, down to my breasts and back up, “I’m hungry for more of a taste of you and I don’t like to be kept waiting.”

A lump formed in my throat and I forced it down, slowly.“More?”

“Oh yes…more,” he stressed, sliding his tongue over his bottom lip.

The area at the top of my thighs must have had a direct connection to that tongue of his because it spasmed, immediately grew wet at the visual and the very idea of what he was implying.

“I’d love too,” I said, hesitating.This man might be too much for me.Perhaps I should jump ship, reattach training wheels and find someone younger.Someone…lessin everything from confidence to body to whatever reaction I had with him.Someone who would have been okay with a one-and-done scenario.

“Great.Then it’s settled.”

“But I have dinner plans tonight.With my roommate, Gina.”

His gaze flickered toward Shelly’s office and back to me.A quick check at the clock said he was still a couple minutes early and who knows what was spinning in that mind of his.“Tomorrow then,” he finally said, pushing off the desk.“And I’m not asking.I’mtaking.I’ll text you later, okay?”

I was already anxious with anticipation.“Yes.That sounds good.”

“Wonderful.”He stepped toward Shelly’s office and as he put his back to me, my breath left in one giant rush, shoulders falling, tension melting.Dear God, the man was unsettling.Then he upended all of it by looking back over his shoulder.“And Brenna, you look beautiful today.”

He turned with a chuckle.My gaze was glued to him until he disappeared into Shelly’s office, finally giving me space to breathe.

“Spill it,”Gina said.“You’ve been weird all night and not a good weird.What’s going on?Work a pain in the butt?”

“Only in that I think I’ve found myself in a hole way bigger than I can dig myself out of.”

“Well, that’s clear as mud.”She took a sip of her sake and I reached for mine.We were at our favorite hibachi and sushi restaurant, tucked into a quiet corner table for two instead of the louder hibachi tables on the other side.At the center of the table were rolls of sushi stacked delicately in a circular pattern and piled high like a pyramid.

“That man I went home from Glitz earlier this week?”

“Yes?He still on your mind, you dirty girl?”she teased and winked.Gina had been waiting up for me after I came home that night, almost two o’clock in the morning by the time I arrived, freaking out when I’d only replied to one of her texts saying I was on my way home.I’d been interrogated but spilled most of the humiliating details from the first night there and then finding someone else on Monday.

Protecting Connor’s identity had been so important to me, but if I was seeing him again…would it be possible to keep it that way?At some point, surely he’d be recognized in public.

“I saw him today.”

“What?Where?”

“Work.”Her mouth fell open but before she could screech out another question, I continued.“He’s a player.”

“Did you know?”

“No, not the first time I saw him, but at my father’s party…”

I dropped that bomb on her, that the man who’d sent me running from Glitz the first time was the same one I went home with the second time.“Gina, don’t freak out.Please don’t freak out.”

“Holy cow, girl,” she almost cried, throwing her head back and laughing.She slapped her hands on the table and garnered the attention of several nearby tables.“When you go naughty, you go all the way.So who is it?You have to tell me.”She leaned in and whispered, flashing me a wink that gleamed with salaciousness in her eyes.“Every single tiny…or large…detail.”

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