Page 28 of Just One More Night

She smiled. Politely. “The fact of the matter is, we had a lot of sex. And I don’t know how to break this to you, Stefan, but that doesn’t make you special.”

“If you say so.” His blue eyes gleamed, but not with the fury she’d wanted. It was something far more like amusement. Only hotter. She could feel it connect to all the shaky places inside her.

She waved her hand in the air, a dismissive gesture she hoped he would find insulting. But he didn’t look insulted. He looked hard, everywhere, as he stood near the windows, his expression something like indulgent. And mouthwateringly hot. And gloriously wicked while he was at it. He wore only the pair of athletic shorts he had tossed on this morning when he’d left the bed, heading out for a run while she was left limp and soft and wheezing for breath. And she had so dearly hoped that he would somehow be diminished by rolling around in the kind of clothes that any random guy would wear. By doing mundane things likerunning,meaning that body of his wasn’t simply his by chance...

But not Stefan. There wasn’t a single part of him that wasn’t commanding or powerful. He wasn’t aguy.He was a man, all man, and he was so far completely impervious to her fervent wishes that he might magically, suddenly, have less of a hold on her.

“I’m not trying to be mean,” she began.

“Are you not? That must be a bit of your kind of fun, yes?”

She ignored that. “We met under bizarre circumstances. There’s no denying that. And we both like sex, clearly. A little rough and spicy, maybe. We spent two years apart after only being together for a few hours. And now, what? It’s been two nights?”

“I applaud your ability to count.”

“Basically, Stefan, we’ve shared a weekend stretched over years. We’re still strangers no matter how many times you’ve made me scream in the course of that weekend. That’s just the truth. And so when I tell you who I am and what I’m like, I think you can trust that I’m the expert in the room on that topic.”

“Indiana. Please.” Everything was the blue of his gaze, then. Too hot to bear. ”Do I strike you as the kind of man who leaves things to chance?”

That panicky thing inside her seemed to pick up speed, or maybe it was simply that she couldn’t catch her breath.Maybe you need to stop trying.

“I don’t know what that means,” she threw at him, panic and all those other dark and nameless things pulsing too hard inside her. While, even then, her pussy melted, as if the way she wanted him was hardwired into her. “You left a thousand things to chance. Whether or not I would show up. Whether I might just take the key you’d given me, come to this address, and rob you blind at some point over the past two years. I could pick a thousand ways this could have gone that did not involve me showing up here, desperate for another taste of you.” She sniffed as if she were above all this, hoping the sound would steady her. And if that was impossible, the way it sure seemed to be, at least let her pretend. “Sounds like a gambler to me.”

Stefan laughed. “I gave you a key, yes. There is also a security system. If you had attempted to access this house with your key alone at any other time you would have found that further security measures are required to get inside. They were waived because I was here. So no, there was no gambling involved.”

“You didn’t know if I’d even show up,” she argued.

“Maybe not.” But he didn’t look unsure in any way. It made her question why she was nothing but. “I built a certain life for myself—you know this. And after I cleaned up the mess I made in Budapest that night, I had a choice. Continue with the madness I began in that alley or go on as if it had never happened. Continue my life as it was. Maybe show up here on the time and date I’d given you, maybe not. That was something I could worry about two years later, if I chose that route. But before I made a decision, I studied.”

Something in her hitched at that, though she frowned at him. Ignoring the way her heart fluttered.

“What do you mean, you studied?” She heard the panic in her voice and made herself laugh. “Between you and me and the college I attended, I was never much for studying.”

“You, Indiana. I studied you.”

Indy felt as if she was coming apart. She found her hands in fists as she stared mutely back at him while all the implications of what he’d just said pounded through her.

And made her pussy ache all the more.

“Don’t be silly,” she managed to say softly. She wished she weren’t sitting on the bed, wearing nothing but cutoff jeans and a tank top. She wished she was swaddled in protective gear and far, far away—where you would only wish you were here,a voice inside chided her. “This is shallow water, Stefan. No need to study a puddle. It is what it is.”

His gaze seemed to sharpen on her at that but he stayed where he was, lounging there with his back to the windows, the very picture of a certain insolent ease. If a person ignored the heft and majesty of his body, that was. Which Indy didn’t think she would ever be able to do.

“What fascinates me is not that you would say such a thing, which of course is false,” he said after a moment. “But that you appear so invested in me believing it.”

Her heart was starting tohurther. “You don’t have to believe it. But I wouldn’t want to disappoint you any further. Because that’s where this is going. You know that, right? You can imagine me to be anything you want, Stefan. I can’t stop you. But that doesn’t make it real.”

Stefan considered her for a moment, and she wanted todosomething. Anything. But she felt pinned into place by that gaze of his. “You are so dedicated to performing this party girl persona. Even when it doesn’t suit you.”

“It’s not a performance. It’s my life.”

“You’re very easy to track, Indy.” It was official. She hated when he called her that. Though she refused to ask herself why. “You put it all out there, all over social media. This party, that party. Hints of new lovers everywhere you go. Suggestive photos in dark clubs. Naked flesh on sunny, topless beaches, all of it calculated to show off your beauty and your inability to stay in any one place for long.”

She forced herself to uncurl her fists when her fingers began to cramp. “I am who I am. I post what I feel like posting. You could always not look at it if you don’t like it.”

“And yet, if all of this were true, surely you would have developed a drug habit to go along with it as so many do. How else to fuel all those late nights and erotic dances? It is common enough. Yet instead, though you spent more time committed to your strip club than your college, you graduated a year late with suspiciously average grades. And with a hefty savings account and investment portfolio. These things do not match.”

“How are average grades suspicious? They’re just average.” But her mouth was dry. “I’m not embarrassed by that.”

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