“But what did you want to be when you were a kid?” he asked, his voice rough with the beer he’d had.
I shrugged, knowing the answer to that immediately, even with the amount I’d had to drink. “Exactly what I became. I wanted to own my own company, call all my own shots, get to tell everyone else what to do all the time. Of course, when I was a kid, I thought it was going to be a whole lot more glamorous than it actually is.”
His mouth twitched into the hint of a smile. “I know exactly what you mean. Calling all the shots isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There are days when I spend a lot of my time wishing someone would tell me what to do.”
I thought about that for a moment. I didn’t often wish for that, but a lessening of the pressure would have been nice. Just a single day of knowing that I was doing what was best, rather than feeling like I was flying by the seat of my pants—with no idea where I was going to land.
“I’d never put it on anyone else’s shoulders,” I told him honestly. “I started the company. The company is my problem. My job. I just wish I could… not, sometimes, you know?”
“You wish you could take days off from being you?” he guessed.
I pointed right at him. “Exactly. I’ve never thought about it before, but that’s exactly it. I wish I could call in sick to my own life. Not all the time. Maybe just once or twice a year.”
He leaned even closer, the hair on his forearms brushing against my skin and making me itch with a sudden need. I licked my lips and leaned closer to him as well, my back taking it upon itself to arch a bit so that my breasts went first, my hips stiff with an ache that I wasn’t going to take the time to try to name.
Good God, had red wine always made me react to men this way, with this teasing heat between my legs? Or was it just this man? Just the fact that it had been so long since a man had looked at me the way he was doing right now?
His eyes moved hazily, lazily over my face, coming to settle on my lips, and then swiveled just as lazily back up to my eyes.
“So is that what you’re doing right now?” he asked huskily. “Taking the night off from your life?”
Well, not in so many words, I thought, but I guessed it was as good an explanation as any.
“You know, I hadn’t gone into the rose garden planning to, but here we are. This definitely isn’t my usual sort of scene.”
“So why are you here?” he asked. He raised one brow in a gesture that made it both a question… and a suggestion. An offer.
I leaned a bit closer, a grin touching the corner of my mouth. “Because you invited me,” I said simply. “And I felt it would have been rude to say no.”
He closed the distance between us before I could move, and a second later his mouth was sealed over mine, the kiss hesitant at first, as if he was asking permission, and then growing bolder, his tongue sweeping into my mouth to brush against mine. I moved toward him, my back arching even further and my mouth opening to his without any conscious effort from me.
Within moments, the kiss that had started out cautious was all tongues and teeth and hot fire, both of us clawing at the other for more. My hands went to his hair and pulled his head toward me while his fingers were busy at my neck, closing around it in a way that should have been terrifying…
But wasn’t.
Instead, it was hot and erotic and so lustful that I could barely get enough breath into my lungs. My abs clenched up, making the spot between my legs sing with need, and all I could think about was this man and what he was doing to me.
By the time he broke the kiss, we were both breathless with it, our chests heaving as we stared at each other.
“So, what if I invite you back to my place?” he asked hoarsely. “What if I suggest you take some more of the night off from being you?”
I leaned forward and brushed my lips across his once again, taking one more taste of them before I answered.
“I guess I’d have to say yes,” I murmured. “After all, I wouldn’t want to be rude.”
Chapter 6
Alice
Let me just say this right off the bat: his place was a freaking dump. He’d been talking about owning his own consulting business, and I’d therefore thought—intentionally or not—that he was… well, on my level, at least a little bit.
Look, I know. Just because you own a company, it doesn’t mean you’re some big-time rich guy, or anything like that. And I also know that saying I’d thought he was on my level made me sound like… well, a bitch, honestly. A stuck-up, snotty, arrogant bitch.
I’m not those things, just for the record. And when I say I thought he was on my level, I mean I thought he owned a larger company. After all, the Bay Area isn’t exactly a cheap place to live.
But either I’d been completely wrong about those things or he was one of those rich, successful guys who preferred to live not only off the grid but also in a very low-key, almost stripped-down way. I’d known guys like that. Millionaires who insisted on having only three pieces of furniture in their entire house and thinking that living in such a minimalistic way made them somehow more socially conscious.
I just hadn’t pinned Jack as one of those guys. He didn’t seem like a hipster, and he definitely wasn’t part of the generation that thought less was more. So I’d thought I would get to his house and see a typical bachelor’s pad in the Bay Area. Furniture that might not all match but was at least tasteful and probably expensive, a large living room with a flat-screen TV, a kitchen with lots of room to cook…
So you can imagine my surprise when it looked like he’d really only lived in this tiny apartment for about two weeks.
There was almost no furniture, and what there was looked like it had been purchased secondhand, and not necessarily because the purchaser liked it but because it was the stuff that was cheap at the moment. I saw a couch in the living room—a basic wooden frame with some cushions tossed over it—and a couple of end tables, plus a coffee table. But there was nothing on any of the tables to indicate that anyone actually used them. There was no artwork on the walls, and not even a TV. No bookshelves, no half-burnt candles on the tables. No coasters on those tables. And not rings in the wood where cold glasses left marks because the drinker hadn’t used a coaster.
“So… how long have you even lived in the city, again?” I asked doubtfully, looking around and trying desperately to get my brain to start working again. Desperately trying to cut through the wine haze and get back to Practical Alice.
Because it was starting to feel like something was very, very wrong here.
And that whole I-need-to-breathe-and-take-the-night-off-from-my-life thing? Yeah, it was starting to feel like an enormous, possibly dangerous mistake.
I hadn’t often thought about what a serial killer’s apartment might look like. Honestly, I hadn’t spent much time thinking about serial killers at all—because who does, unless you’re one of those people that is obsessed with books and documentaries about serial killers? And even then, do you think about them in your normal, everyday life? Do you walk around out on the street watching out for them?
When a hot guy picks you up in a rose garden and makes you laugh and then takes you to a bar and kisses you like no one has ever kissed you before, do you automatically assume that he might be a serial killer on the hunt for his next victim?