Chasing Kings (3 page)

“Scotch,” she said. “Straight up. Please.”

Damn, he liked her already. The tight-laced ones tended to be a real good time. Once he got beyond the prim-and-proper front, there was usually a bad girl lurking under the surface. He was betting Sam had an inner bad girl even
she
didn’t know about.

“Sure.” He found the bar and poured them each a glass of scotch, before sitting directly in front of her on the leather ottoman.

She seemed nervous, like she couldn’t decide how to move out of his reach without coming across as rude. “There are other seats,” she pointed out.

“I like this one.”

“Are you
flirting
with me?” With the scotch tumbler in her hands, she couldn’t cover her mouth and pretend she wasn’t smirking.

“If you have to ask, I’m not doing a very good job of it.”

“Didn’t you come here to have sex with someone else?”

Ethan shrugged. He sometimes forgot how relationship rules worked in the outside world. Within the industry it was normal for friends to have sex without any emotion attached. Sex without commitment was his job description, so it was easy to extend that into his personal life.

Plus, sex with Kelly hadn’t been his ultimate goal in coming to Vegas. He was more interested in the money she owed him. But he couldn’t explain that to
this
Samantha without things getting complicated, so he said, “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“
Charming.
” Sam sipped her scotch, wincing.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?”

“I don’t know you,” she countered.

“No, you don’t. But trust me, I’m a nice guy.”

“You think so?”

“I got you a drink, didn’t I?”

“Ah, yes. A regular Sir Galahad, aren’t you?”

“Galahad was chaste, so no.” Ethan winked, drinking in her shocked expression with glee. “I went to Stanford for two years. How do you like me now?”

Samantha got a handle on her face and stared into her drink. “Sorry.”

“Nah, it’s cool. I get it. Why would anyone smart get into a business like this, right?”

“I didn’t mean… Actually you know what, yes. Why would you? I mean, Stanford is an amazing school. You could have gotten a job anywhere.”

“But why? Why be a banker or a lawyer if that’s not what I was passionate about? What do you do?”

“I own a bookstore.”

“And it makes you happy?”

“When I sell enough to pay the bills? Absolutely.”

“Okay, well…I like sex. I’m
good
at sex. I’m the fucking da Vinci of going down on women. The Greeks would have written epic poems about me.” He grinned at her, leaning in a little closer. “So why shouldn’t I get paid to do what I love?”

“Oh.”

“I’ll let you stew on that for a bit.” He got up, leaving his glass on the ottoman, and located the suite’s phone to call the front desk for her. Five minutes later he’d gotten six apologies and the assurance both he and Samantha would be comped a night for the mistake and would each receive a bottle of champagne.

When he got off the phone, Sam was no longer in the living room. He found her in the hallway trying hard not to stare at the wriggling silhouettes on the wall.

“Going somewhere?”

“I should leave.”

“I sorted things out with the hotel. Your real room should be ready.”

She nodded, not meeting his eyes, and grabbed the handle on her bright pink suitcase. “It was nice meeting you,” she said, and he almost believed her.

“What are you doing in Las Vegas over Valentine’s, Samantha Hart?”

“I…” She stared at her suitcase. “I was supposed to come in March for an independent booksellers convention, but my travel agent made a mistake. By the time we figured it out, the tickets were nonrefundable, and…here I am.”

“By yourself?”

Samantha shrugged. “No big deal.”

She didn’t strike him as the kind of girl who really thought it was
no big deal
to be alone at a nice hotel on V-Day. He said, “Maybe I could—”

A knock at the door interrupted him, and Samantha looked relieved for the rescue. Saved by the bellhop. “Sorry again about the mix-up.” She offered him a polite smile then disappeared into the hall.

“Hey, Sam?” he called, having had his last attempt cut off.

She returned to the room, nervous curiosity apparent in her features. “Yeah?”

“Maybe I could take you out, show you around town?”

She blushed. “That’s a nice offer, but I think I’ll pass. I’m just going to hang around the hotel mostly anyway.”

It was flimsy as excuses went, and Ethan was nothing if not persistent. When Sam left the suite, she might have assumed that was the last she’d see of him, but he had other plans in mind.

Chapter Four

Finally.

Sam flopped onto her mattress, sinking into the thick, cozy embrace of the down comforter. A bottle of champagne on ice had greeted her in the room, a nice apology from the hotel for their part in the mix-up. She’d enjoy it later with a bubble bath, but for now she just wanted to
sleep
.

Maybe when she woke up her whole encounter with Ethan Silver would prove to be nothing more than a weird pseudo-sexual dream. Of course, only Sam could have sex dreams without any actual sex in them. Just prowling, leather-clad hotties who ate women out for a living.

She shivered, remembering the silky quality his voice had when he talked about how much he loved sex. Sam liked it as much as the next girl, but she hadn’t
had
any in six months, not since her breakup with Boring Kyle. Perhaps her brain was messing with her now, offering up an imaginary plaything she couldn’t
possibly
touch.

Could she?

No.

She scolded herself. Of course she couldn’t start anything with Ethan. It wasn’t going to happen. He was a porn star, for crying out loud. What would she tell the girls at home?

What happens in Vegas…

A squirmy, uneasy feeling writhed in Sam’s belly. Part of her
wanted
to go back upstairs to Ethan’s room and ask him to whip it out, take her right there on the leather couch. That stupid bed was out of the question.

“What is
wrong
with me?” she asked herself.

Twenty minutes alone with a man and she was thinking about all the filthy things he could do to her. There were probably things he could do she’d never heard of.

No. Nope. Not going there, not ever.

Besides, she’d been the textbook definition of awkward, acting nervous and puritanical the entire time she’d spent with him. It didn’t help that her queasiness from the shuttle had stuck around, making her nose wrinkle up from nausea at the most inopportune moments. There was no way he would want to see her again. In all likelihood he’d forgotten her the second she walked out the door. She knew what porn actresses looked like, and if that was the norm for him, there wasn’t a chance in hell she could meet his expectations.

She wasn’t double jointed, she only had a B cup and she could count on one hand the number of blowjobs she’d given in her life. Sam wasn’t a porn star’s wet dream.

She was plain-Jane Samantha Hart from Oregon, small bookstore owner, spinster in training.

Sam sighed and raised her face from the duvet, eyeing the champagne. Perhaps a boozy bath
then
a nap might be the best course of action. She certainly slept better when she’d been drinking, and nothing made her sleepier than champagne.

Wandering into the bathroom, she started to fill the deep soaker tub, eyeballing herself in the mirror while steam billowed through the room. Huffing, she returned to the bedroom and shucked her clothing on top of her suitcase, finding a plush white robe in the hall closet to cover herself. She popped the champagne and glared at the glasses provided—two, of course—before sticking her tongue out at them and returning to the tub carrying the full bottle.

As she sank into the almost too-hot water, she replayed her encounter with Ethan. Why had she been so abrupt with him? He’d actually been nice to her, in spite of all the personal-bubble invasions. Nothing he’d done warranted her being short-tempered. She’d accused him of wanting to whip his dick out, for heaven’s sake. If anything, he’d been within his rights to call security the second he found her in his suite. Instead he’d fixed everything and was probably responsible for the bottle in her hand.

Nice-guy porn star. That didn’t compute.

It wasn’t fair for her to judge him by his job, though. Her last boyfriend, Boring Kyle, had been a lawyer, and he’d turned out to be a deeply flawed scumbag. Ethan at least came across as decent enough. And unlike Kyle, he was honest about the fact it was his job to screw people.

Sam took a big swig of champagne.

What the hell was she doing here?

It was bad enough she was going to spend Valentine’s alone, but how had she ended up spending it alone in Vegas thinking about a porn star?

Muriel was secretly trying to ruin her life.

She sat in the tub long enough for everything to get good and puckered, and to polish off three-quarters of the bottle of champagne. When she climbed out, the shift from lying to standing made her woozy, inducing a massive case of vertigo.

Bracing herself against the door, she felt lightheaded and giggly and much drunker than she had in the tub. Apparently stewing in bubbly took her from zero to smashed in under sixty minutes.

Dressed in her robe, she stumbled her way back into the bedroom and hopped onto the bed, sprawling across the king-size mattress. Now that she was feeling no pain, she could see a potential silver lining to this mess.

She was in Vegas for a week, she had a big bed to herself, and she had
no one
to answer to. Back home she’d gotten accustomed to being under the watchful eye of an entire town, something that was unavoidable when you lived in a veritable hamlet with a population of thirteen hundred people. But no one from Edison Falls was with her in Vegas. There wasn’t a gang of septuagenarian women monitoring her every move to report back to the other townies, no busybody middle-aged neighbors asking why she was drinking at five o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, and most importantly no Kyle Thomas popping up at every turn with his stupid, ditzy new girlfriend.

And what Vegas lacked in Kyle, it made up for with men like Ethan Silver.

Especially
Ethan Silver.

With a substantially higher blood alcohol level, Sam was beginning to reconsider her stance on the “actor”. He was good-looking, he oozed confidence the way some men reeked of desperation and he’d wanted to hang around her even after she acted like a fool around him.

It didn’t say much for his mental capacity, but neither did his line of work. He had to be a little crazy. Crazy might be just what the doctor ordered.

Maybe as a gift to herself, Sam would let loose and do something naughty.

Really
naughty.

It was so far out of her wheelhouse, though, she didn’t even know how to begin. Should she ring up the front desk and ask to be patched through to the Provocateur Suite? And what did one say in that situation?
Hello, Ethan, remember me? I practically broke into your room and tactfully mentioned your dick. Want to bone? I hear you might be good at it.

Yeah, not so much.

Was there protocol for booty calling a porn star?

Did she have to pay?

Sam covered her face with both hands, shaking her head and letting out a giggle. No, he wasn’t
American Gigolo
, he was just a guy who had sex for money.

Wait, what’s the difference?

She couldn’t quite figure it out, but she knew there
was
a difference. One she could use to justify any romp she might have with him.
Oh, it’s okay, he wasn’t a hustler, he was a porn star.

Sam sat upright, her head swimming from the sudden downwards rush of blood. Who was she kidding? She wouldn’t call Ethan. She’d humiliated herself around him, and she wasn’t the kind of girl to respond to a booty call, let alone initiate one. The crushing horror of his inevitable rejection would only further ruin her vacation.

Nope, no dice. It was settled, she was going to pretend the whole incident had never happened and grin and bear the remainder of her vacation alone. And sexless.

Nestling herself amongst the half-dozen soft pillows on the big bed, she flipped on the flat screen and scrolled through the limited channels the hotel offered. A preview bar on the bottom of the screen announced new release movies available for rent, and Sam figured if she couldn’t have a holiday fling, she could at least justify a pricey rental. Maybe she’d splurge big and order room service. Nothing said luxury like a twenty-five-dollar cheeseburger and a pay-per-view chick flick.

She selected the VOD option on her remote and perused the catalogue of options. There were a few cheesy rom-coms she’d been meaning to see, but nothing reached out to grab her.

Until she saw the Adults Only tab.

Sam cast a wary glance around the room as if there was someone there who might be silently judging her. She lowered the volume on the TV, half expecting a crescendo of orgasms to announce what she was up to once she selected the menu.