Tempting Me: A Bad Boy Romance (3 page)

Chapter 3

Aria

It takes me a second to realize why my mouth is dry and my head is pounding. I wish my amnesia had lasted longer. The entirety of last night comes flooding back to me. I remember the champagne, the shots, the strippers, the dancing, and, most of all, I remember Ryan. It’s not just dancing with him that I keep thinking about. What is making me blush is when I think about our conversation. I can’t believe I shared some of my deepest secrets and fears with a man who makes his living taking his clothes off.  I can tell myself it was all because of the champagne, but I know it’s a lie. It is far too easy to blame my actions on alcohol and the discomfort of being in a strip club. My reaction to Ryan was more than just bubbles on the brain and being surrounded by gyrating men.

When Ryan was dancing with me, it was like nothing I have experienced or felt before. I know I sound like Ella, but I really want to be with him. I want to have his lips on my flesh, to feel our naked bodies pressed against each other. After I felt his hardness pressed against me last night, I am desperate to know what it would feel like to have him inside me. Rendering these feelings even more unbearable is the fact that I have never had them about Xavier.

I shake my head to get all thoughts of Ryan and sinful pleasure out of it, but I only succeed in making my headache from last night’s debauchery worse. It’s not only the desire for sex that has me feeling guilty and upset. The real dilemma is how good it felt to open up to someone. I can’t get over him being the first person who has expressed actual concern about what I want.

I need to get Ryan out of my head and the one person I hope can do that is Xavier. It has been far too long since we’ve talked and felt like a real couple.

I don’t know if I should tell Xavier about last night. I’m so confused about everything right now. I decide on calling Ella before going over to see Xavier. She is much more experienced than me at handling men and the problems that come with them. First and foremost, though, I am going to brush my teeth and shower. I need to erase last night from my memory.

After my shower, I have a glass of orange juice and am about to call Ella, when she texts. She wants to meet at the European style breakfast place a block from where I live. I slip on my favorite jeans, a blue cashmere sweater, ballet flats, and pull my hair into a high ponytail. I complete my look with lip-gloss and mascara.

Ella is already at our favorite table by the window. There are few things more entertaining than people watching in Brooklyn.

I don’t even have time to sit down before, Ella shouts, “I am so proud of you!”

I look around to see who heard, then remind myself that nobody knows what she’s talking about.

“I need caffeine and food before I can talk about it,” I tell her.

We both order coffee and croissants and some cheese and fruit to share. I really miss my mom’s breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and grits. What I wouldn’t give for real southern grits and farm-fresh eggs. In the country, it doesn’t matter how much money you have or who you are. Everyone eats grits and fresh eggs.

The coffee arrives and I drink it just like it is; hot and black. Ella sips a nonfat caramel macchiato.

“Can we talk about how amazing last night was? You and that dancer were like something out of
Dirty Dancing
.”

I blush at the memory of rubbing my most sensitive spot against Ryan’s face. 

“Amazing or not, I need to talk to Xavier about it.” Ella stares at me like I’ve grown a third head.

“Tell him what? That for the first time in your perfect, meticulously planned life, you did something spontaneous?”

I know she isn’t saying this to be unkind, so I let the barb go by unchallenged. We sit there in uncomfortable silence until Ella finally breaks it.

“You should talk to him but don’t tell him about the whole bump and grind part. You said it’s been forever since you’ve felt close; don’t make it worse.”

I nod and blink away threatening tears.

“I worry that he doesn’t really love me. I worry this whole marriage looks good on paper but that there is nothing else worth getting married for.”

“Oh honey, don’t think that. You need to go and talk to him today and get everything sorted. The wedding is just over a week away,” Ella reminds me with sympathy.

“I will,” I tell her. “I have to stop off at the cake shop to make some final decisions then I am going straight to Xavier’s.”

“Good girl,” she says.

“I just really need to hear from him that he loves me, and he wants this wedding to happen.”

Ella tells me she understands that I need to get going and can’t stay and   linger over coffee and gossip like I usually do. I wish I could skip the cake place altogether but I know I can’t.

My mother has been doing almost all of the wedding planning. When she told me that I absolutely must make the final choice for the cake, I couldn’t say no.

When I finally arrive at the cake shop, the wedding planner, however, wants to drag the final cake pick out all day. I keep smiling and nodding and I agree to everything she and the pastry chef recommend. How long can they possibly make this appointment last? After what seems an eternity, they come to an agreement on the final version of the cake. I try to muster enthusiasm but it is for a wedding I am completely unsure of.

Finally free of the cake shop, I take a cab across the bridge to Manhattan, and have the driver drop me a few blocks from Xavier’s apartment. After being in such a hurry to see him, I’m nervous and want a few extra minutes of walking to collect myself.

The sun is shining and I slow myself to a Texas pace and let the New Yorkers swarm around me. I’m doing the right thing; I must be. I have known Xavier since I was born. He is a good man, loves his family, has a great career, and my mom thinks he walks on water. What could I possibly have to worry about?

Before I know it, I’m in front of his building. Luis, the doorman, lets me in and there is no turning back.

“Miss Aria, it’s been so long. I’m happy to see you. The wedding, it’s any day now?”

I smile and nod, just like I’ve been doing all day. “Yes, it’s almost here.”

“You must bring me photos. You will be moving in, right after the honeymoon?”

I think of my wonderful little apartment in Brooklyn. The first place I could call my own. I do have to remind myself the apartment isn’t really mine. My parents pay for it since I’m in college and have no income of my own. 

“Yes Luis, I will be moving here when we get back. A month from now and you will be complaining about me like you do all the other tenants,” I joke with him.

Luis puts his key into the elevator so that it will take me all the way to the penthouse.

“He doesn’t deserve you, remember that Miss Aria,” he says just as the doors close between us.

I brush his words aside.
Doesn’t deserve
is just something people say. Nobody knows what goes on in a relationship. I smooth down my hair. It’s a nervous habit I can’t seem to kick. I watch the numbers climb to the 32
nd
floor. The doors open right into the entryway of his home.

I plaster a smile on my face. I know this will go well. It has to go well. Otherwise, what in the world have I been doing my whole life, and what will I do if it all changes? The elevator doors slide open into darkness. All of the lights are off. Could he still be in bed? It’s eleven in the morning, which seems late even for Xavier on a Sunday. I try not to make any noise just in case he is sleeping.

The living room is empty and I don’t hear anything in the kitchen. My flats don’t make a sound on the marble floors but I tiptoe across the marble anyway. I know Xavier must be here. Luis would have told me if he had gone out. Would he have told me if he hadn’t come home? “He doesn’t deserve you” rings in my ears. Just before I turn the doorknob, I think I hear a noise coming from the bedroom. I hear it again, and there is no mistaking it this time; a low moan that sounds like Xavier. He must be dreaming, or doing sit-ups or push-ups or something. Xavier is nothing if not obsessive about his workouts.

I open the door and the last thing I ever expected to see is what greets me in the bedroom. It takes a second to realize exactly what is going on. It’s Xavier, in his usual winter Sunday attire of jeans, a dark t-shirt, and a V neck sweater. The only change from the normal is that his jeans are pooled around his ankles, and there is a blonde between his legs. I see her perfectly manicured purple nails digging into his thighs. Her head is rhythmically going back and forth on the length of Xavier’s erect penis. His eyes are closed, his head is tilted back, and the expression on his face is one I have never seen before. I am not sure that I have the vocabulary and experience to describe it. Bliss, maybe?

His fingers are wound into her hair and he is pushing her hard onto his shaft. The noises I heard were Xavier being pleasured.

I must get out of here. I don’t want to see any more of this. I turn to leave and the girl pulls away from him, and looks right at me. She wipes the saliva off her mouth with the back of her hand and grins at me.

“Aria,” she says.

It is Ella, Ella, my best friend in the world, giving my fiancé a blowjob. I want to flee but I am frozen in place, because I also want to scream and yell, and most of all I want to ask, “Why?”

“Aria,” Xavier grunts at me. “What the hell are you doing here?”

He looks down at Ella. “I thought you said she wouldn’t be back for hours?”

Ella shrugs and then beckons to me with her forefinger.

“I know you want to join us,” she says. “I saw an entirely new side of you last night.”

“Yes,” Xavier says. “Come here. I heard all about how you were practically having sex with some white trash loser on a dance floor. I’m pissed you’ve been holding back on me. But I’m glad you have it in you.”

“That’s not what it was.” I say, ready to defend both Ryan and myself. But then I come to my senses. I am not the one who has explaining to do. I let loose my anger on him.

“Are you kidding me? My best friend is on her knees sucking your, your penis and it is two weeks before our wedding and all you can think to say is, join us?”

I turn on my heel and leave the room with what little dignity I can muster. Xavier calls after me, “Don’t tell our parents. Aria, we can work this out.” 

Work this out?
That is the straw that broke the camel’s back. I grab a bottle of his Icelandic Vodka and throw it as hard as I can at the wall of mirrors he has in his living room. The shattering glass is cathartic for me and I pray for seven years of bad luck for both of them.

Don’t cry, don’t cry. Don’t cry,
I repeat to myself over and over in the elevator. I run past Luis in the lobby and escape into the anonymity of the streets of New York.

It is only when I get home and collapse onto my bed that it dawns on me that not only did Ella run to Xavier to tell him about the strip club, but she also knew I was on my way and would catch them in the act.

Chapter 4

Ryan

“I’m a Yoga instructor”

I didn’t ask her what she did, but I’m glad she shared. I was on the fence about going home with her. But now that I know she spends her days working on her body and training it to stretch in weird and wonderful ways, I am sold.

Whiskey alone isn’t cutting it after a day like today. An evening of fun with a limber and eager blonde is exactly what I need to get back on my game. I close out the tab and lead her out onto the street. These kinds of after hours’ bars exist for hook-ups.

“Is your place close?” I ask.

“Just three blocks from here.”

“Great; we’ll walk.”

This hook-up is just what the doctor ordered. Not just because I’m not my usual charming self when I don’t get laid everyday but because I need to get that smoking brunette out of my head, and the best way I know to shake trouble is to have a bout of no holds-barred sex with a hot woman who is ready, willing, and able.

Yoga girl is all of the above. And it doesn’t matter that I can’t remember her name as long as it isn’t Aria.

The night air feels good and she’s up for walking, which I’m thankful for. I like a clear head both in myself, and the woman I’m going to have sex with. She lives in a walk-up that is, in fact, exactly three blocks from the bar. She is all over me the moment we enter the stairwell. She strokes my growing erection over my jeans, with almost too much enthusiasm.

“Whoa there, let’s slow this down,” I tell her.

The stairwell is damp and smells rank. I can hear the infamous New York rats scurrying across the cement landing we are on. I hope the state of the stairs is not a sign of things to come in her apartment.

“I don’t want to slow down,” she whines but she does, nonetheless, take her hand off my crotch.

We arrive at her door and she starts pawing at me again. I resist the urge to push her off of me. I may have been premature in believing this is what I need tonight. But I’m here, and she’s hot for me. It would be a shame to let the whole evening go to waste.

“Ooh, your muscles are so big,” she coos in my ear.

If I had a dollar for every time a girl told me that, I wouldn’t need to strip anymore.

“That’s right baby. Open the door and you can feel them for yourself.”

I really want to get out of the hallway and into her apartment. This building is like something from a novel, documenting the plight of immigrants in the 1940s.

She doesn’t turn any lights on but leads me straight to her bedroom. In one swift movement, her little black dress is off and on the floor. She has nothing on underneath and I am at full attention.

“What’s taking you so long?” She makes a move for my jeans.

“Take it easy, baby.” Did she ever tell me her name?

She crawls up onto the bed and faces me. She crosses her arms under her jutting breasts and props them up high to emphasize her cleavage.

“Don’t make me wait anymore,” she pouts.

I want her to stop talking, but I get her point. I don’t want to wait anymore either.

I join her on the bed and gently push her on to her back. I start at her high perky breasts and slowly explore my way down her flat stomach. She writhes and moans with abandon beneath me.

“Go down on me, go down on me. I need to come.”

This girl is ripe for the picking, but I’m not even close to ready to bring her to climax. I slow my route to her slit, and cup her breasts. Her nipples are as hard and peaked as the Himalayas and I pinch them with just enough pressure to make her yelp for more. She flings one of her long toned legs behind her head and rubs her wet pussy against my chest. With such easy access being granted, I have no choice but to go down and give her the release she has been begging for. She moans and yells so loud, I fear a neighbor will call the police. I hold her leg in place behind her head and roll on a condom with one hand and then thrust into her.

I feel my own release coming and with it, my misgivings over the exchange with Aria begin disappearing. What does it matter in the end? I will never see her again and under no circumstances will I ever open myself up like that to another woman.

I’m not sure when I fell asleep, but I wake up in a cold sweat, my heart pounding a staccato drumbeat against my ribs. I had that damn recurring dream again. Correct that; I had that damn recurring nightmare again. It’s always the same. I wake up in the dingy small bedroom of my youth; the twin bed, film and band posters on the wall, stained ceiling. My mom and dad’s trailer, the only home I knew for the first seventeen years of my life. In the nightmare, I am right back there and the last five years have all been a fantasy. I’m still pale, skinny, broke, and most of all, clueless about girls.

I take in the unfamiliar surroundings, and breathe a sigh of relief that it’s not the trailer. Then I curse myself for not going home after the evening’s entertainment. Once sex was over and yoga girl was fast asleep in sexed-out bliss, I should have hit the road. But uncharacteristically, I fell asleep. Now, here I am, still in her bed, and she has her legs wrapped around me so tightly that it’s like waking up with a boa constrictor using me as a pillow.

Despite my desire to escape before she wakes up, morning wood is getting the better of me. Especially when I can’t help but recall how she flung her leg behind her head so I could have better access to her damp entrance when I went down on her. So yeah, last night was hot, but not so hot that I don’t regret staying the night.

She is starting to stir, which means it’s time to make my escape. She rolls onto her back and I allow myself a last appreciative look at her toned body before I jump out of bed.

Fortune favors me this morning and I am dressed and out of the bedroom without the yoga superstar waking up. Maybe it wasn’t so terrible that I spent the night here after all. I leave her a short but sweet note on the entry table, to thank her for an unforgettable experience. And I am out of there. If I remember our walk here last night correctly, I am only a couple of blocks from my favorite coffee shop and then two more blocks from my own apartment.

If you told me when I was seventeen and still living in my parent’s trailer that I would have a glass-walled steam shower in an apartment in Manhattan, I wouldn’t have believed it. My parents and I shared a bathroom and by the time I got my turn, there was no hot water left and never any water pressure.

If someone told me that my morning routine would include shaving and buffing my entire body, and I mean absolutely every part of my body, I would think the person completely insane. But things change, and for the better. My body is my business now and I have to take care of every aspect of it.

I love my apartment and I love that it is just me living here. It is a one bedroom, and has an open floor plan. The space isn’t huge, but it’s not like I will need a larger place. I intend to stay single and this place suits me perfectly.

I never bring women back to my place. I don’t care that it would only be for a night. This is my sanctuary and I don’t need some desperate chick showing up at my door looking for seconds, or worse, a relationship. I’m not saying that no one from the club or bar has managed to track me down, but I like to keep it difficult.

It’s already eleven by the time I finish in the bathroom. Now mind you, all that time is not spent on getting myself perfect for the club. When you work as late as I do, eleven is breakfast time. I whip up an omelet and some bacon. I almost always have an omelet in the morning. Not just because it’s the best food to cure a hangover and gets me fueled for the gym, but because it’s the one thing my mom would make for my dad and me on the rare Sunday morning when everyone was home. Her omelets consisted of as many eggs as she had and whatever was in the fridge. My friend Juan told me that his mom did the same thing only she called it, “juevos rancheros” instead of “omelets du jour.” It wasn’t until I moved to the city that I learned “du jour” meant “of the day,” or in trailer park speak, “whatever is on sale at the market.”

Alone in my kitchen, my mind keeps jumping back to the girl from last night. Not yoga girl from the bar, but the pretty bachelorette, Aria. My parents seemed to think that living in a trailer and making Sunday breakfast out of anything that was still edible was good enough. All I could see growing up were two people that worked themselves to the bone and had little, if anything, to show for it. I wonder what Aria would think of the trailer? She’s so privileged, she has probably never seen a trailer, except in the movies.

When I wasn’t yet seventeen, my friend told me about his cousin that was making six figures as a stripper. I knew then and there that stripping was my ticket out. I started hitting the gym, discovered tanning salons, and the rest is history.

The last five years have been nothing but easy money and easy women. I dance six nights a week and almost never spend a night alone. I know the ladies are just into me because of my looks and my reputation in the bedroom, but still, I never let a night end without the
woman du jour
being satisfied, often multiple times.

All those women, and it is a blue-eyed brunette, who is getting married in a week no less, that cast her spell over me. I wish I had never sat down to talk to her, but she was just too gorgeous not to approach. The second I figured out she was not the kind of girl who would be interested in one last fling before getting married, I should have left. Instead, I told her to come find me if she doesn’t go through with the wedding. What the hell? I guess I’m supposed to sit at home and pine away for her like a chick from a romance novel. But I’ve got news for her. That was a slip up. It was a moment of weakness and nothing more. And who can blame me for getting a little weak when I was lost in those blue, blue eyes.

I need to get moving if I’m going to make it to the club in time for my first dance. I shouldn’t have hit it so hard at the gym today but I was working the girl out of my system.

The club is packed for a Sunday. I need to start feeling it, and sooner rather than later. But sure enough, like always, once the music comes on, the performer in me takes over. I have some new moves for tonight and the ladies respond with screams of pleasure and a downpour of cash.

“You did good tonight, kid,” Mickey tells me after my dance.

It isn’t long before I’m back in my street clothes and am going to grab a drink at the bar in the club before heading home. The newer guys are still dancing for a thinned-out crowd.

“Thanks Mick,” I say.

“You were dancing the panties right off those dames.”

“All in a day’s work,” I reply.

I walk to the bar feeling pretty good about myself. It’s not that I don’t know I’m good, but a compliment from Mickey has long been considered to be an Urban Myth.

“Hey Theresa. Macallan 18, straight up.”

“I know your drink by now, Ryan. You’ve been ordering it since I started working here.”

“I just don’t want you to think I take your skills for granted.”

I sip my scotch and savor the smooth flavor, then I look down the bar to see what the action is and just about drop my glass. There is Aria sitting at the end of the bar. She is just as gorgeous as yesterday, except her eyes are red and raw as if she’s been crying.

I knew I shouldn’t have stopped for a drink.