Page 19

“WE HAVE TO STOP DOING this.” I lifted the woman off the floor. Again. I should have minded all of these interruptions, but damn, she felt nice. “Tristan Hart, by the way.”

“Laney. Hathaway,” she said breathlessly, regaining her balance.

A stare stretched between us for a palpable moment.

Was she there for the same reason I was?

The steward had thought so. A newbie, perhaps?

Ordinarily, I’d stay far, far away from those.

I was there to find my vacation fling, preferably an experienced woman who wanted lots of sex, and nothing but sex. A newbie couldn’t handle me.

In all my years doing this, no other woman smacked me upside the head with such a heart-stopping rush of lust after a few seconds.

Touching Laney sent sparks through my body like never before.

I felt like something had grabbed and shaken me.

I usually closed down my emotions on this cruise.

Perhaps it was because she fell and I touched her before I had a chance to disconnect from my world.

Surrender my real life for this annual erotic fantasy.

Or...that dare sat in the back of my mind. My cousin dared me to approach this cruise differently. Just...talk to a woman.

Here goes...

“How’s your knee?” I asked her, pointing hesitantly. “From, you know, the fall.”

When she looked down, waves of glossy brown hair tumbled across her shoulder, the lavender scent overwhelming me. “Fine. Don’t tell anyone,” she whispered and leaned into me like a fantastic secret was coming my way. “These aren’t my shoes. I might be tripping a lot on this cruise.”

Why did I find that so damn adorable? The knight in shining armor in me, perhaps. The real me. Not the tongue-wagging dog I turned into on this cruise. “I’ll listen for any loud thumps out here in the hall,” I remarked, resisting a woof.

“Or screaming.”

Thinking she meant in an orgasmic rush, I dropped my hands to hide a growing erection. “Excuse me?”

“What?”

“What?” My eyes locked on hers. With everything I had, I pushed my thoughts into her brain. Are you hiding a fire pin from me?

Caught in stunned silence, all I did was breathe and stare. Then Laney’s friend tiptoed over, and I could have sworn the blonde gave Laney a gentle push. “I’ll be in the cabin unpacking,” the friend said.

Laney shook her head then stepped back. “Right. We have to unpack. Bye, Mr. Hart.” Her hypnotic blue eyes cast a lingering gaze over her shoulder.

I stayed frozen in that spot until the loud click of Laney’s cabin door knocked me out of my dirty thoughts.

Every year, I boarded the cruise ship in peace without anyone noticing me. I came here to blow off steam. My job and pain in the ass older brother built up a year’s worth of stress. Escaping land hadn’t stopped Luke from flooding my emails about our hotel, though.

After several fumbling tries, I got my key card into the slot and shoved the door open.

I immediately frowned at the bland suite and brown carpet.

Man, I hated how it reminded me of my own hotel’s guest rooms. Minimalist made sense for the cruise people who didn’t want passengers hiding in their cabin.

Not when the alcohol now costs an arm and a leg.

With all the beige surrounding me, Laney and her red hard-case luggage and yellow dress stuck in my mind.

I was swamped with misplaced frustration.

I hadn’t gotten a good look at the jerk she’d boarded the ship with, the one who’d just kept ambling along when she fell. That dick move sure pissed me off.

When several bottles of hair product flew from the bathroom counter, I realized I’d been slamming shit. I bent down to pick them up and put them next to my shave kit when I caught my reflection in the mirror.

A haggard and shaken man stared back at me.

I should have kept walking and not touched Laney.

Weeks of prepping for a cruise that permitted me to check my emotions at the door went to shit the minute I touched her.

I couldn’t walk past a woman lying on the floor.

Especially one with long legs in a short skirt.

Yeah, that’s what I liked. Dark, shiny hair, long and flowing.

It stirred my insides the moment I saw her sashaying up the gangplank.

The guy she was with had looked familiar, but after one glance at her tight ass, my eyes and mind stayed put.

When she fell, and the asshole kept walking, I got ripped out of mindless screwing mode. The real Tristan Hart had been thrust onto the scene. The quiet guy who lived in the shadow of my playboy brother. Except for that one week, where I was the sexual force to be reckoned with.

I swallowed and scrubbed my hands down my face. “Right,” I murmured.

I unzipped my luggage. Expensive bags I didn’t put proper tags on, preferring to hide my real identity: a billionaire looking for a fling on vacation.

I’d already given Laney my real name. “For fuck’s sake,” I said, rubbing my forehead. Anonymity reigned supreme on the devil cruise. No one used their real name.

I turned my thoughts away from my momentary lapse in judgment, concentrating instead on putting all of my crap away to get on with this cruise. The place where every year, I lived out my wildest fantasies for a week, then went back to my boring life working with Luke in our late father’s hotel.

To light a fire under my ass, I reminded myself women were waiting for me. Me . The alpha. The one to be with. The one to please. That tasty brunette next door would be a nice treat.

I took in the suite’s separate bedroom. Large bed. Good. Tris got a little crazy in bed.

When my phone rang, I groaned. “Yeah, Luke.”

“Did that boat leave yet?” My brother knew what happened on these cruises.

“No.” I froze. “Is Uncle Charlie okay?”

“He’s fine. Surgery went great.” Luke sounded serious. “It’s about the hotel.”

My brothers and I owned The Sterling, a New York City hotel that had been dumped on us after our father’s death.

Our cousin, Savannah had been married in the hotel the weekend before.

All had been going great until her dad, my uncle collapsed.

Last I heard, the guy was stable. Just a blockage and a routine bypass would fix him right up.

Meanwhile, Sebastian, Savannah’s brother and wife, Kennedy had laid into me about this cruise. Kennedy had even dared me to take my fantasy to a new level. Find a nice girl and just talk... That seemed crazy at the time, except a nice girl just happened to be in the cabin next door.

“So, what’s up?” I asked Luke, wanting to get my brother off the phone.

“I don’t want to ruin your ability to concentrate and get a hard-on.”

A sick relative might have done that. Other than that, I never had a stamina problem before. On the cruise, or anywhere. “I’m listening.”

“The offer from those crazy sons of bitches came in.”

“And?”

While everyone had been mooning over the hotel for the family weekend wedding, Luke and I had been waging a silent war. Luke was trying to sell the hotel. He even put out a request for bids to developers.

I had mixed feelings about selling my posh five-star baby. Sure, it’d been more work than we had imagined, but our efforts were finally paying off.

Before naming myself chief operating officer, I had made a small fortune in the marketing consulting game, but running the hotel had brought out a different set of passions. The place could use some work, though. The Sterling needed a killer facelift and Luke didn’t want to make that commitment.

No surprise. I didn’t secretly call my brother No-commitment Luke for nothing.

“It’s sweet, man.” My brother sounded like Uncle Charlie had, telling us Sebastian got into Harvard.

That ‘sweet’ offer would drive a wedge between us. Shit, I felt my dick shrinking already. No, I didn’t want to think about the hotel. I wanted—no, deserved seven days of peace a year.

“I want to make sure there’s Wi-Fi on that big canoe,” Luke added. “I already emailed you the paperwork to look at. Send me your comments.”

“You mean you’ll read my emails this time?” My ears pricked when I heard giggling next door.

I shook the distraction away by hanging up my custom dress shirts and exquisitely tailored slacks. Looking like I stepped off a Tom Ford runway added to my alpha persona. My heart rate ticked up picturing that damn brunette tearing my favorite two-hundred-dollar shirt off my body.

“You know my messages get buried,” Luke responded, bringing my thoughts back around. “Or Lucy deletes them by mistake.”

“I’m tired of hiring assistants for you.” I stopped mid-step. “Please tell me you’re not sleeping with her.”

“No!” Luke huffed. “How fucking stupid do you think I am?”

And if he’d tried, at least she had the good sense to turn him down. “Fine. Next time I have something important to tell you, I’ll ride up the elevator and bust into your penthouse apartment.”

“Make an appointment, please.” Luke gave a throaty laugh. “I want all of this to be over, Tristan. It’s been a shitshow. I don’t know how Dad did it, to be honest.”

“Running a billion-dollar hotel is easy when you don’t have a family to care about.” I clenched my teeth as the anger I felt toward my father for leaving our mother when we were young flooded in.

“He’s made us a ton of money. After we sell, we’ll be billionaires ten times over. Mom, too. She always gets a cut.” Luke’s ‘living well was the best revenge’ excuse rang hollow.

I pushed away the bitterness. And thinking of Mom, who now lived in a Florida mansion was the ultimate hard-on killer. “You know how I feel about this. If we invest—”

“Save it. Haven’t you thought for a second what you would do with billions of dollars in cash that’s not tied up in this crumbling atrocity?” Sounded like Luke wasn’t itching to go back to his law firm, either.

It’d been three years since we had our lives turned upside down by our father’s death. Luke, our younger brother Grayson, and I became hotel owners overnight, a job none of us expected or wanted.

Luke had snatched up the ceremonious title of CEO. Grayson, a rebel and struggling actor, brought a long line of dubious guests to the lobby bar, and always dashed away without paying the check. Or leaving a tip. That was his involvement in our father’s prized possession.

With so many billions of dollars, none of us would have to work ever again. The billion or so we already pocketed had corrupted Luke enough. If forced to sell, I might invest in something small and innovative—a start-up, perhaps.

“We’ll talk more about it when I get back.” I happily lived in Luke’s shadow on dry land, but this was my turn to be a god. “Have Lucy pencil me in for dinner.”

“You got it.” My brother cleared his throat. Luke and I were not all that different, only my brother screwed women nonstop throughout the year. “Oh, Tris ?”

Now how did Luke know that’s what women called me on this cruise? “Yeah?”

“Lick some good pussy for me,” Luke crassly blurted then hung up.

My body seared hot and fast when my dirty mind pictured Laney and her gorgeous ass spread out before me.

I dragged a hand through my hair. What the fuck? She wasn’t there for the same reason I was. I was sure of it. “A damn shame,” I mumbled under my breath.

Those were some great tits I felt against my chest. All that perfumed hair...I could get lost in there. How would that silky mane feel all over my naked chest?

How would those innocent lips feel on my body knowing I’d be the only man to have her that week. The real dare was trusting myself with someone so precious and na?ve.

Did I have it in me?

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