“Where are you from?” I couldn’t tell from her accent. Nothing immediately jumped out and gave it away. Her vowels were a little flat, but not like a New Yorker.
“Cleveland.” She pointed a corkscrew at me. “No trashing my hometown. I can’t stand people who like to shit-talk Cleveland when they’ve never set foot in it. It’s stupid.”
Her passion made me raise an eyebrow. “I wasn’t going to shit-talk Cleveland. I’ve actually been there for work and I have zero complaints. Great food, enthusiastic football fans.” Fans who had stuck around longer than was reasonable. I wouldn’t turn down an offer to coach there because you could wind up a legend if you had a great season.
“Exactly.” She was struggling to open the wine. She kept turning the corkscrew and nothing was happening. “My dad and brothers have season tickets. What the hell is wrong with this thing?”
“Here, let me.” I reached out for the bottle, grateful for the distraction. I didn’t want to discuss football, and I regretted bringing up the subject. I didn’t want her to know I was a head coach, that I was charged with revitalizing a franchise that had been steadily declining, that I loved my job and worked an insane amount of hours. That I knew her ex, Dante.
Not yet, anyway. I just wanted to keep it simple.
I opened the bottle and poured us both a glass of wine. I would have preferred the vodka, but I also didn’t want to sit around drinking all night. I had better activities in mind. She picked up a glass and sipped it, eyeing me.
“This isn’t the best apartment for entertaining. I don’t even have a coffee table.”
“It’s better than trying to sneak you into my apartment.” The thought of being busted by my girls was chilling. Or frankly, the nanny. I’d had a hard enough time keeping a nanny because my daughters were on some quest to see how many nannies they could convince to quit in a six-month period. We were up to three already. “I don’t even know what I would say to my daughters if we got caught.” I took a swallow of the wine and set it back down. “Come here.” I reached for her.
She set her own glass down and shifted into my arms. Damn it, she fit perfectly there.
“We’ve had a drink in a quiet location,” she said, the corner of her mouth turning up. “Now what?”
My response was to kiss her. I couldn’t get enough of the taste of her, the feel of her in my arms. I really fucking wanted to see her naked and it was pretty much a guarantee that Dakota wasn’t a woman who would be shy about it. As a dancer who had performed for years, she was clearly comfortable in her own skin.
The sides of her tight red dress were absent, some kind of design choice, and it allowed me to rest my hands on her waist, on those tantalizing spots of bare flesh. Her skin was cool to the touch from being outside and I wanted nothing more than to warm her up. I kissed her, teasing her mouth open with my tongue. She gave a little moan of approval that made me instantly hard.
Dakota broke away, sighing in pleasure, tilting her head a little, eyes dark with desire. I brushed my lips over her neck, breathing in the scent of her. She was wearing a deep, earthy perfume. Something erotic, with a scent I couldn’t distinguish, but it wasn’t floral. Floral didn’t suit her. She was more confident, sexier, more free as opposed to delicate or fragile.
“You smell amazing,” I said, dipping my head down to run my tongue along the side of her breast. She had perfect full tits, boosted up for maximum display. I teased my thumb across her nipple as she gave a soft gasp.
“It’s an essential oil. It’s supposed to make me smell like a femme fatale.”
“It definitely works.” I pulled my head back and eased my fingers into her hair. Her lips were swollen from our kisses and parted. “You have me at your fucking mercy.”
Dakota placed her hands on my chest, running them over my shirt, as if she were exploring or testing my muscles. She undid the first button on my shirt. “I promise not to kill you. Beyond that, anything is possible.”
Fuck. There was no way I could take it slow after a comment like that. She was just too hot and I had let her slip through my fingers once. I wasn’t going to wait another minute. Without bothering to unbutton my shirt, I hauled it off over my head. I heard a button pop but I didn’t care. She gave a sound of approval and ran her hands over my bare chest as I reached behind her and undid the zipper on her dress.
It was too tight to fall of its own accord, so she took a small step backward and reached up to ease it off one shoulder, then the other. Transfixed, I watched as she uncovered her tits, slowly, teasingly. She wasn’t wearing a bra. I swore. There was something covering her nipples, but other than that, it was just a whole lot of full breasts, round and high and pure perfection. Then she pushed the dress over her hips and thighs, bending over slightly as she did, which made the view of her chest even more interesting.
When the dress hit the floor, she stepped out of it and stood there in nothing but tiny red panties and her high heels.
My mouth went dry.
She was the sexiest woman I’d ever seen.
Long, lean legs, a narrow waist, those delicious tits.
But the sexiest thing of all?
The smile on her face. She knew exactly what she was doing to me and she was enjoying it.
“Dakota?”
“Yes?” She leaned close to me, reaching past my body, hands holding her breasts in place. She lifted her wineglass and took a sip, before setting it back down. Her tongue ran over her bottom lip.
“You just might kill me,” I said.
Then I put a hand on her waist, and with other clasped her hand, as if we were dancing, and I backed her up until she was pressed against the wall. I meant it to be gentle but it was harder than I intended. She hit the drywall with a startled gasp.
Not giving her a chance to protest, I covered her mouth with mine and ran my hand down her side, over her hip, and inside her panties.
Chapter Four
Brandon was kissing me and teasing inside my panties and I almost giggled at the surreal quality of it all. I’d never thought I would see him again, and now here he was in my apartment and I was basically naked, gripping his hard biceps. This was a fantastic turn of Valentine’s Day events.
When I had reached for my wine, I had managed to tug off my nipple pasties with an urgent tear that hadn’t felt all that awesome, but was preferable to him attempting to remove them. Men hadn’t historically proven themselves capable of removing pasties without making it weird. My nipples were stinging a little, but that would go away in a second. Trying to be casual, I stuck the pasties to the wall next to me. I didn’t want to destroy the illusion that I was totally together. Brandon looked at me like I was nothing less than perfect and I kind of enjoyed that.
Then again, I had plowed into Brandon earlier at the bar. He probably had no illusions about me. At any rate, my quick maneuvering allowed him to kiss down my neck, over my cleavage, and pull a nipple into his mouth without any interruption. I closed my eyes so I could just enjoy the delicious sensations he was creating in me.
He smelled like the woods. Like he’d literally just stepped out of the pine trees in Minnesota and right on into my apartment. I wondered again how old he was, then realized it didn’t matter. It was just a coincidence that I had run into him. Literally. Nothing more. It wasn’t fate. It was a vagary. An odd happenstance. An accidental occurrence after a multitude of decisions.