One Night to Risk it All

“Um...you don’t need to be concerned. Besides, we haven’t done anything we should be ashamed of,” she said. “I haven’t...violated any vows.”

“Yet,” he said, his grin turning wicked. “It’s still early.”

“So it is,” she said, her heart thundering hard.

“Do you want to dance?”

She looked at his outstretched hand and she felt an ache, a need, tighten in her belly. Ajax had never once danced with her. Had never even asked. And until that moment, she hadn’t realized that she’d been missing it.

In that same moment, she realized that this wasn’t just a request for a simple dance.

She knew that this was it. The deciding moment. That if she said yes to this, she wouldn’t say no again for the rest of the night.

But maybe that had been true hours ago. Maybe from the moment she’d locked eyes with him, saying no had been an impossibility.

“Yes,” she said, the word torn from her, scraping her throat raw and leaving in its place a sweet, light relief. She had decided. Tonight she was going to embrace life, whatever that meant. “Yes, Alex, I want to dance.”

CHAPTER TWO

HE KISSED HER for the first time out on the dance floor. There were people all around them, the crush of bodies intense. And she let them push her into him, let them drive her against him so that she could feel the hard heat of his muscles against her chest.

When she was pressed against him, she looked up, angled her head toward his. She knew she was begging for it and she didn’t care. Because she needed this. More than air. It didn’t matter what happened tomorrow, or in the month leading up to her wedding, not if she didn’t survive this night.

And it felt like she might not if he didn’t touch her. If she couldn’t taste him.

But he didn’t make her beg for long.

He dipped his head and claimed her mouth, his tongue forcing her lips apart. She opened to him, took him in deep, kissed him until she was dizzy. There had never been a kiss like this. Not for her, maybe not for anyone. One that stole her every thought, her every worry. One that reduced her to nothing more than need, nothing more than a deep, physical ache that demanded satisfaction.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, her body moving against his, no longer in rhythm with the music, but in rhythm with her own desire. She forked her fingers through his thick, curly hair, held him against her, poured all of herself, all of the desire that had been building in her for so many years, into a kiss that she shouldn’t be having. A kiss that was forbidden to her.

And that just made her angry. More determined to get what she needed tonight. What she would never have after tonight. This was her last chance.

A secret thrill. A secret bit of adventure. No one ever had to know.

“Come back to my hotel with me,” she said, against his mouth, unable to part from him for even a second.

He didn’t answer—he only kissed her again, and she realized there was no way he’d heard her, not over the music.

She pulled his head down and put her lips against his ear. “I have a hotel room. Come back with me.”

That was all the encouragement he needed. Faster than she could change gears, Alex was dragging her off the dance floor and out into the warm summer night. He paused outside the club door, pushed her against the wall and kissed her, the motion and the kiss savage, explosive. Perfect. She arched into him, rubbing her breasts against the hard wall of his chest, trying to find some satisfaction for the need that was tearing through her like a beast.

“Now,” she said, her eyes closed tight. “We have to go back now. I need... I can’t...”

“I agree.”

“It’s close. I think it’s close. I’m dizzy, actually. The city is sideways. It’s hard to tell where the hell we are.”

Alex laughed and pressed his forehead against hers. “I know exactly where the hell I am.”

“And where is that?”

“With you. I don’t need to know anything more.”

She exhaled sharply, tried to ignore the stab of emotion in her chest. This wasn’t supposed to make her feel. “Wow. You do say the best things. You really do.”

He took her hand. “Lead the way.”

She did. And somehow, right then, she felt more like herself than she ever had. Like the two halves of her life, the woman she was in public and the woman she was in private had merged together for the first time.

She felt brave. She felt certain.

She felt happy.

A whisper of who she’d been before she’d learned to shut herself down. Before the Colin debacle. And blackmail. Before she’d had to face her father and tell him what she’d done. And what the fallout from it might be.

I can’t protect you anymore, Rachel. These choices you’re making are dangerous. People, men, will always try to take advantage of you because of your connections, the press will always hunt you because of who you are, and you’re courting it. No more. If you keep on like this, I will not cover for you again. I love you too much to enable you this way.

And less kind words from her mother. A woman in your position can’t afford these mistakes. It’s not only immoral, it’s dangerous. Think of what the press will say. About you. Us. I haven’t spent all these years helping propel us to this position in society to watch you tear it down with stupid behavior!

Angry words spoken in private. A side of her mother only Rachel ever saw.

But she’d taken those words, balled them up and stored them in her chest, kept them close, ever since.

Except...except this moment.

But it was different. It was out of time, out of the real world entirely. And Alex didn’t even know who she was. He didn’t want to use her. Didn’t want to get her into a compromising position so he could sell photographs, or a dirty video.

Even Ajax, one of the kindest people she knew, wanted her for her name more than anything else.

But that wasn’t Alex. Alex just wanted her.

That simple thought pushed everything dark away from her mind. Everything in the past, everything in the future. There was just now. And now was perfect.

They started walking down the sidewalk, then they were running, laughing. She bent and kicked her shoes off, carrying them in her free hand as she ran barefoot down the stone walk.

They stopped in front of the hotel, the lights from the lobby casting a glow on Alex, on the fountains in front of the building. “Oh, yes,” she said, breathing heavily. “I’m in a nice hotel.”

“So you are.” He laughed, the sound reverberating through her body.

“Don’t feel awkward or anything.”

“I don’t,” he said.

Of course he wouldn’t. It was hard to imagine him feeling awkward anywhere. “Good. I need to know at least three more things about you before we go in, okay?”

“Depends. Are you going to do a credit check?”