LITMIR.BIZ

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sputtering stopped, and a voice rumbled out her name. “Louise.”

      Slowly she turned. Jaiven Rodriguez eased off his helmet as he smiled at her with such knowledge, such assurance. If Jaiven Rodgriguez at a party had been hard to resist, then the man on a motorbike was damn near impossible.

      You don’t like bad boys, she reminded herself. You have had way too much experience with one in particular to make this remotely appealing.

      Too bad her brain wasn’t listening. Although in actuality it wasn’t her brain that was responding to Jaiven. It was her body, and her body was saying yes.

      Yes, take what he’s offering and go with it for a night. When was the last time she’d been so much as touched? Accepting a parcel from her postman did not count.

      And at least a night with Jaiven Rodriguez would not engage her emotions. No chance of a relationship with this bad boy. No possibility of falling in love. No danger of getting hurt.

      Just a basic and overwhelming need finally, wonderfully met.

      “Party over?” Jaiven asked, and Louise heard that rich, velvety note of laughter in his voice. She was staring, she realized belatedly. Again.

      “Not quite. But I was ready for bed.”

      Her whole body tensed in mortification as Jaiven gave her one of his toe-curling smiles. “Good. So am I.”

      She stared him down. Almost. “You know I didn’t mean it like that.”

      He arched one dark eyebrow. “Didn’t you?”

      Hell, maybe she had. Maybe her body was staging a coup over her brain. Resistance was futile.

      Still her brain attempted one last feeble attack. “I told you that caveman thing was not attractive, right?”

      “Do you see me dragging you onto this bike?”

      No, the trouble was she’d get on it, just as she had once before. She’d take whatever a man dished out and ask for more.

      Whoa. Jaiven was not Jack. And a one-night stand was not a marriage.

      Still… Could she seriously be thinking about this? Getting on a bike with a stranger? God knows where he’d take her. He could strangle her in an alleyway and dump her body in the Hudson River.

      The fact that he was a well-known, multimillionaire entrepreneur made that a little more unlikely, but only just.

      And yet she was still thinking about it. Maybe it was the knowledge that Chelsea had found some happiness, so she wanted to grab a little for herself. Maybe it was just five years, or really a lifetime, of sexual starvation. Maybe it was this man, looking at her with both assurance and hunger.

      She folded her arms, eyed him coolly. “If I get on that bike, you know where this is going, right?”

      “A nice hotel on Forty-Sixth Street I know?”

      She swallowed. A hotel. It sounded so sordid. But also safe. “And that’s it.”

      “You’re talking my language.”

      She laughed then, shook her head in disbelief. Was she actually warning Jaiven that she didn’t want a relationship? Talk about unnecessary.

      “In any case, though,” Jaiven said in that slow, sexy rumble of a voice, “you can’t get on my bike. I only have one helmet.” She must have looked disbelieving because he chuckled softly. “I ride safe, and I mean that in all sorts of ways.”

      “Nice.”

      “Glad you think so.”

      They stared at each other, the moment spinning out so Louise felt breathless. Her mind emptied of thoughts and her heart started to thud. She really was thinking about doing this. Hot sex with a stranger.

      A little voice in her head, a voice that she’d been trying to silence for ten years, whispered that this was a bad idea. She didn’t trust men, not with her heart and not with her body. She wouldn’t be able to stand it if he ended up humiliating her, rejecting her. She could not bear to feel that way again, not for so much as five seconds.

      She took a step backward.

      “Looks like it’s not going to work out.”

      “You give up awfully easy.”

      She shrugged. “Some things aren’t meant to be.”

      “And yet we left the party at the same time, met up out here. Seems like fate to me.”

      A thrill ran through her. He was trying. He really did want her.

      Maybe she could do this. Maybe this was actually what she needed.

      “So what do you suggest?” she asked. “If you won’t let me on your bike? And that was not some double entrendre, by the way.”

      “I’ll meet you at the hotel. You can take a cab. It’s The Black Book on Forty-Sixth and Seventh Avenue. The penthouse suite.”

      “The penthouse suite? What, do you have a standing reservation?”

      He gave her another slow smile. “Something like that.”

      So he kept an expensive suite on permanent reservation for his one-night stands? Charming.

      But then, this night wasn’t about charming. It was about sex. Hot, raw, primal sex.

      “How long will you wait?” she asked, and he cocked his head, swept her in a thoroughly assessing gaze.

      “Twenty minutes.”

      Louise let out a choked laugh. Twenty minutes? That’s all of his time she was worth? “What if there’s traffic?”

      He glanced down the near-empty Fifth Avenue. “There won’t be. Twenty minutes should be plenty of time to decide what you want, Louise. Because once you’re through the door, I have no time for regrets or cold feet.”

      She felt a shiver run right through her; his tone was utterly implacable. “I consider myself warned.”

      “Good.” He settled his helmet back on his head and revved his bike. “See you in twenty minutes,” he said, and sped off into the night.

      Chapter Two

      IT HAD BEEN seventeen minutes. And thirty seconds. Jaiven prowled through the penthouse suite of the Black Book with restless impatience. He’d been so sure she was going to come. She hadn’t said as much, but he’d seen the way she’d looked at him. Felt her want. It was a mere thirteen blocks from the Plaza to here, so where the hell was she?

      Had she actually turned him down?

      He went over to the bar that overlooked Bryant Park and poured himself a whisky. Maybe it was just as well, he decided. She’d obviously been a little nervous about negotiating a one-night stand. He’d thought she was ballsy but maybe this kind of thing was out of her element.

      And he didn’t sleep with virgins, or even women with little experience. He liked his lovers to be as assured in bed as he was, to know what they wanted and be confident enough to take it. No regrets, no repeats.

      Louise Jensen, despite her dirty laugh, didn’t seem to fit that mold. But he still wanted her. Enough to check his watch again and see that nineteen minutes had passed.

      Damn it.

      He was surprised, he realized, at how disappointed he felt. Sex was simple, and a woman’s company was easily found. All he needed to do was go down to the bar and chat up one of the women he’d already seen there on his way in. Fifteen minutes tops, and he could be back here with a warm and willing body in his bed.

      But he didn’t want just any warm and willing body. He wanted Louise. She felt like a challenge, even an enigma; she seemed confident

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