Lauren Blakely - Night After Night

“I arranged for that gust of wind. I ordered it to arrive at this instant.”

He laughed, then gestured to a sushi restaurant at the corner. “You hungry?”

She looked at her watch. “It’s four in the afternoon.”

“I know. But we skipped lunch when I needed to eat you instead, and I figured once we return to my place you’re definitely going to be tied up.”

“See, here’s the thing,” she said, holding up her hands, as if offering them for shackling. “You’ve been promising me these ropes, Clay, and my wrists are still achingly empty.”

He swatted her ass. “Get some food in you, woman, before I tie you up and tie you down.”

* * *

Clay had been to this restaurant a few times, including once with his ex, Sabrina. She’d asked the sushi chef if she could lick the yellowtail. She wasn’t drunk. Sabrina had never been a drinker. She’d been too in love with other substances instead, with little pills prescribed by doctors. “Little darlings for my headaches,” she’d say when a migraine swooped down on her. But then the migraines, if she truly had them, became so crushing that she needed more and more and more.

She needed them all the time. Up her nose. Every few hours.

But the worst part? The way she lied. The times she denied. How she hid what she was up to.

That was the problem. That’s also why Clay didn’t want any drama with Julia. He knew there were no guarantees in relationships, and certainly people had a way of making promises and breaking promises. Still, he was keen on this woman, he wanted to spend more time with her, and he wanted to be upfront about the past so they could have more of the present.

After they finished eating and left the restaurant, he cleared his throat. “So what’s your story, Julia? Got any any deep dark secrets I should know about?”

She started coughing, sputtering at the abruptness of his question.

“You okay?”

She nodded, but kept hacking as they passed an art gallery. “Just a tickle in my throat,” she choked out.

“Let me go back and get you some water.”

She held up her hand to say no, coughed once more. “I’m fine. But what kind of question is that?”

“An honest question. I’m just trying to get to know you,” he said, his tone straightforward.

Then the sky broke. Out of nowhere it seemed, the clouds heaved up heavy droplets of water, pelting them from above.

“Holy shit, that’s some rain,” Julia said, and grabbed at the collar of her coat, as if that would protect her from the water. A few feet away, a man hailed a cab, racing to get inside the vehicle. A family down the block ducked into a coffee shop, and a car squealed to a stop at the light.

“I’m not that far from here. Only three blocks. But do you want to go to the coffee shop?”

“No. I want to go to your place.”

They picked up the pace, Julia’s heels clicking loudly against the wet sidewalk. “You okay in those shoes?”

“Totally fine,” she said.

“There’s a little souvenir shop on the corner. Let me get an umbrella for you.”

She grabbed his arm, wrapped her hand around it and pushed him against the brick wall of a shoe store. “Don’t even think for a second that I can’t handle a few drops of rain, Mister. I’m not some fragile flower.”

He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Never said you were.”

“I like the rain. And I’ve always wanted to kiss in the rain,” she said, gripping his shirt collar, and running her fingers along it. “Now give me one of those fabulous New York kisses in the rain that make all the girls swoon.”

“Gladly,” he said and cupped her cheeks in his hands, held her gaze, then moved in for a kiss, sweeping his lips softly against her, slowly kissing her in the rain, drawing out decadent little sighs and murmurs from her mouth. The sky unleashed a firehose of water, and the rain become a goddamn downpour. Julia quickly broke the kiss, and pointed to her hair, now plastered against her head. “Okay, time to run because that was romantic for about ten seconds and now I’m just a drowned rat.”

He laughed. “Somehow, you’re still unbelievably sexy though,” he said as he grabbed her hand.

They walked quickly, doing their best to dart and dodge passersby and sprayed-up puddles from cars. He kept his arm around her the whole way, and after another block, they were both soaked, but she couldn’t deny that she liked being wet with him, even this kind of wet.

“My coat is useless,” Julia shouted against the pounding rain. The afternoon sky was slate gray and slamming buckets down upon them. His jeans stuck to his legs, and her stockings were waterlogged. Soon enough they reached his building and ran inside. He took a deep breath once the world turned dry again thanks to four walls and a roof.

“That’s a hell of an angry sky,” he said as they stepped inside the elevator.

“And there’s nothing romantic about getting caught in the rain.”

He laughed. “Turns out that’s all just a lie of the movies.” He looked her up and down, her hair clinging messily to her her neck, and her cheeks. Her mascara had started to run and a drop of water slipped down her face. “I know what we need.”

Candlelight bathed the warm room in its soft glow. A D’Angelo album played faintly from an iPod in the bedroom, but here inside the spacious bathroom with its cream-colored tiles and marble tub, the world was warm again, and the water was the perfect temperature.

Hot.

Julia leaned back against him, her slim body lining perfectly with his, the waterline bobbing near her breasts. He was sure he could stare at them for quite a while and not ever want to look away. They were gorgeous, full and round with rosy nipples that he couldn’t resist touching. He cupped one in each hand, kneading them.

“Hmm. Where did we leave off? Something about deep dark secrets and skeletons in the closet.”

She leaned her head back against him, her hair fanning out in the water, like a mermaid. “Yes. I believe you were going to tell me about yours,” she said.

“Ah, so many skeletons,” he said, running his index finger across the soft skin of her belly. She sighed happily, snuggling in closer against him.

“I was once a dirty businessman and ran a Ponzi scheme like Bernie Madoff,” he said with a straight face.

She turned to look at him. “Really?”

He’d said it so matter-of-factly that it had taken her a moment to realize he was teasing. “No. But the truth is I ran a high-class call girl ring as a side business to my law practice,” he said, in a deliberately confessional tone.

“Shut up,” she laughed as she slinked deeper into the water.

“You got me. I never did that. A buddy of mine did, but he got out of that racket recently. Reformed.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear that.”

“He’s the one who runs the poker games I was telling you about. He’s also my go-to guy if I ever need to track down intel on someone I’m not so sure about.”

“Like an investigator?”

“Sort of. He just knows stuff. He can find out anything about anybody like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. He shifted away from talk of his friend. “But those aren’t my skeletons.”

“What are yours then?”

He reached for a bar of soap from the side of the tub, soaped up his hands, and began washing her legs, enjoying the feel of her sexy body sliding across his palms. “Actually, I don’t think I have too many skeletons. You know about my family already. I’ve been a lawyer for ten years, I work hard for my clients, I like entertainment, and I hate lies,” he said and she tensed instantly. He briefly wondered why she’d react that way. But then, he reasoned, nobody liked lies. She probably hated them as much as he did. He kept on going, moving from her calves to her thighs. Then he stopped because this was important, what he had to say. “They’re a deal breaker for me. There’s no need for lies. You agree?”

“Of course,” she said quickly.

“I don’t like being caught up in something that’s a game, or a cheat. Been there, done that. I won’t go there again,” he said firmly, using his negotiation voice, as memories flashed by quickly of his ex. She was the reason he felt this way, and he needed Julia to know he didn’t want and wouldn’t tolerate a repeat. “I was involved with a woman named Sabrina for a few years. I thought I knew her well, but her whole life was a lie.”

“How so?”

“She was addicted to painkillers and denied it for the longest time. She started taking them for headaches, and she kept on taking them. And she became so wrapped up in it that her life was dictated by it. She missed work, she wrote fake prescriptions, she started doctor shopping. Selling her stuff to pay for more pills – jewelry, her iPhone, Coach purses. Anything that had value she sold off to buy more,” he said, stopping to gently wash off the soap from Julia’s legs. “I tried to help her too. Get her into rehab.”

“How did she react to that?”

Clay shrugged heavily, the defeat of those days with Sabrina rising back to the surface. It had been a while since he’d ended things with her for good, and there certainly weren’t any residual feelings or lingering love. Still, the memories had a way of wearing him down because that last year with her had been rough. Her furtive phone calls, the late-night texts to slimy dealers and doctors who started providing for her, and the slide into all those lies. He could still recall the unabated shock he felt when he woke up in the middle of the night to find her rooting around in his wallet and pocketing some bills to buy more drugs.

It wasn’t even about the money she took. He couldn’t care less about that money. It was the lies and the secrets, and how they both had wore away at him. That last year with her had been the worst year for his firm. The only year his revenues were down from the one before. Precipitously. He couldn’t concentrate on deals, couldn’t focus on clients. The way she’d toyed with him had nearly cost him the business he’d worked so hard to build. Flynn had landed a big client for them – the action film director – and in the span of those last few months with Sabrina, Clay had gone and lost that client for them.

If he were a ballplayer, he wouldn’t just have been benched. He’d have been called back down to the farm leagues for the way he’d messed up that deal.

“She was game for it on the surface. Did the whole contrite act. Said she had a problem and needed help. But she relapsed every time and kept going back for more,” he said, and while it hurt like hell at the time, it didn’t hurt anymore. She was the past, and he’d learned from it. He wasn’t going to repeat those mistakes again.

Julia laid a gentle hand on his arm, resting it against the strong, curved strokes of his tattoo. “I’m sorry, Clay. That sucks.”

“Yeah, it did,” he said. “It’s hard when someone you care about won’t change and won’t even try. I kept trying to help her and she kept promising to get help,” he said, drawing a circle in the air with his index finger. “But it never happened. And so on you go.”

“On you go indeed. And here you are,” she said, twisting around to lay a sweet kiss on his chest. Then his shoulder. Then up to his jawline.

“Here I am.”

“I’m glad you’re here with me,” she whispered, and it was so unlike her to let go of her hard edge, but he liked it when she did in moments like this. “I’m loving this weekend.”

Here he was, falling faster than he expected to.

That’s why he hated lies. Made sense. Made perfect sense. And, hell, she shouldn’t worry because she didn’t have a drug problem, like his ex. Not even close. She had a money problem, and it wasn’t her fault. But she also had a truth problem because she couldn’t tell a soul about all those dollars she owed Charlie. She certainly couldn’t tell Clay. He did well for himself, and she didn’t want Charlie to sink his teeth into her new man.

New man?

What the hell? It was one weekend. One moment. Nothing more, and she certainly couldn’t think of him as her man, no matter how much she enjoyed every single second of these days with him, from the way he touched her to the way he made her feel in her heart.

Like it could open again.

Like she could let him in and not be burned because there was something about him that simply meshed with her. Maybe it was the way he held her, or it could be the way she felt when she was with him. Free.