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I pressed my lips to hers, and Goddammit, I’d thrown myself into the deep end.
She melted into me. Her mouth parted, and in an instant, she let me in, and although I hadn’t been able to pick up adistinct scent from her in the crowds, thetasteof her mouth was unexpectedly calming in the sea of chaos.
The moment her tongue dragged across mine, something shifted for her though. I could feel it in the way her fingers loosened in mine, in the way she brought her hand around the back of my neck, in the way she stepped backward but pulled me with her out of the middle of the sidewalk. She met resistance, and as I dropped her hand to cup her waist instead, I felt the roughness of tree bark scratch against the backside of my knuckles.
Goddammit, I wanted more.
My brain ran in circles as she kissed me, cycling through idea after idea. I couldn’t bring her home, not when she could easily run into an image of her father on the wall, not when my son was sleeping on the other side of my penthouse. I could take her to a hotel, but that seemed almost dirty, and even though I had all the money I could ever ask for, I would struggle to find somewhere good enough last minute in Manhattan.
I was running out of options as her lips reluctantly broke from mine, and I said the only thing I could think of.
“I have a boat,” I breathed. I wasn’t even sure if she could hear me over the sounds around us.
“A boat?”
“It’s docked down at North Cove,” I said, pulling back just enough to look into her eyes. They flitted anxiously back and forth between mine, and for a moment, I wondered if she really had no idea who I was. “Let me take you out.”
“I…” Her teeth dragged across her lower lip just like they had in the lobby of the museum earlier, and for a second, I was right back there, not knowing who she was or what she could do to me. I could live in that a little longer. “Okay.”
Chapter 3
Ava
Ispent every second of the taxi ride letting lie after lie slip out from between my teeth about my time studying contemporary art at college while wracking my brain to figure out how I was going to avoid him for the rest of my life.
Or maybe I could just dye my hair black again, since that seemed to make such a massive difference.
But as his hand reached out for me from where he stood on the deck of his sailboat, I couldn’t help but feel a massive pang of relief that he hadn’t realized yet. The likelihood of tonight ending the moment he knew who I was weighed on my mind, and I would lie as much as I needed to in order to keep that from happening.
I took his hand and stepped off the dock, the far too large sailboat rocking just an inch from the inertia. He steadied me before I even had a chance to potentially lose my footing, and for a second, I almost told him that he didn’t need help, that I had spent enough time on sailboats growing up—even this one—and didn’t need assistance.
But that could raise questions, so I accepted the assistance.
“One drink,” I smirked, lifting a single digit between us as I stepped down off the edge of the boat and onto the main deck. “That’s it. Nothing else.”
The corners of his mouth twitched upward into a smirk and for the smallest of seconds, I let myself take this in, take it all in, as he stepped down to meet me. It was never truly dark in Manhattan, but the clear, black sky behind him mixed with the glittering lights of the city’s skyline on his left lit him up almost like a dream, a dream I was sure I’d had hundreds of times in my life. Adrian—orJohn—had littered my thoughts for years, and now here he was in the flesh, likely not believing my insistence on one drink.
It was almost hard to believe that I wasn’t dreaming again.
Adrian’s tongue dragged across his upper teeth as he chuckled breathily through his nose. “One drink,” he parroted. He slipped his hand into mine and dragged me toward the interior of the boat, right where I knew the kitchen and bar were positioned. “And what drink would that be?”
The polished oak door swung open, and he flipped a switch, illuminating the large space in a warm, soft glow. “What do you have?”
He didn’t bother dropping my hand. Instead, he pulled me with him as he slipped behind the bar, marble countertops lining either side of us with a wall of alcohol and under-counter fridges to our right. “Everything,” he said, releasing my hand in exchange for wrapping it around my midsection. For the briefest of seconds, our chests touched, his warmth seeping into me through his pressed shirt—but then I was lifting, up, up, up, until my rear slid onto the marble countertop. His hips slotted between my open thighs, his jeans catching and pulling just slightly at my skirt. It tugged the waistband just a little lower on my hips, exposing just an inch more of my midriff. “It just depends on what you want from me,Lily.”
The bar lights twinkled in the blue of his eyes as he leaned a little closer. Each little line in his skin reminded me that this wasn’t just any man who was coming on to me. This was Adrian, dressed up as some strange, different version of himself who went byJohn.This was my father’s friend. This was someone I was convinced I would never have the chance to go on a date with, let alone touch, and as I slid my fingers gently across the curve of his jaw and felt each little prickle of his five o’clock shadow, I couldn’t help myself.
I’d wanted this for so long with him. Fuck my rules when it came to dates—this was different.
I pressed my lips to his. Taking that plungemyselfinstead of letting him do it felt like I was giving in to something I shouldn’t. But this wasn’t like how it had been up near Central Park. This wasn’t confined and restrained because of the public nature of it.
He wanted more, and it was blindingly obvious here in the privacy of his sailboat.
He kissed me hungrily and greedily, his mouth devouring me as if I were a meal and he hadn’t eaten in years. His hand, far larger than mine and so fucking warm, trailed along the top of my thigh over the patterned fabric of my skirt. His other wrapped around the back of my neck, holding me in place and keeping me from retreating from the invasion of him.
But I didn’twantto retreat.
I wasn’t sure exactly how far he would go. Memories of him hit me the more his cologne demanded my attention, and although I hadn’t heard much about him since my parents had divorced and my father left Boston for the shimmering lights of New York City, I had vague recollections of attending an engagement party for Adrian when I was fifteen, just a few months before I’d last seen him.How many levels of bad is this?
