Never Kiss a Stranger (4 page)

“Of course you want to be with me again,” I said. “I just let you tie me up and have your way with me.”

Wilder winced in pain—the emotional type, not the physical. I was quite positive most women threw themselves at him.

“I meant it when I said I don’t do relationships,” I said.

“I did too.” His teal eyes searched mine. “I don’t do relationships. Hooking up on a regular basis does not constitute a relationship, Addison. Not in my world.”

“You say that now,” I said, “but I know how these things happen. We’ll hook up a few times. Maybe one night we’ll be hungry, so we’ll run out to get dinner. We’ll inadvertently get to know each other, which will make us start caring about each other. We’ll look forward to the next time we see each other again, and then we’ll start having romantic thoughts.”

He could argue his point all he wanted, but I knew I was right. I’d been down that road before. Besides, I was already in love.

With my job.

He scoffed. “I don’t want to get to know you. I don’t even know your last name. I’ll never ask, I promise. And I won’t tell you mine.”

I stared at him. He really wanted me, and I couldn’t deny how good it felt to be desired again. But still. I didn’t have time for a relationship. That was why I hooked up with him in the first place.

“Why?” I asked. “You don’t need me. There are millions of girls out there who’d kill to be your little sex toy.”

One look into his eyes coupled with the things I knew he could do to me physically, meant I could very easily fall in love with him if I wasn’t careful, and that was exactly why I had to nip it in the bud.

“I’ve met a lot of Nikkis,” he said. “Nikkis are all bat-shit crazy. Sexy as fuck, but crazy. I’ve met Ashleys, Jennas, Tiffanys. Even a few Chloes. They’re all the same. Pretty, yet shallow. Every single one of them. But I’ve never met an Addison. You’re different, and you intrigue me.”

“We could have the best intentions, Wilder, but we can’t control the uncontrollable.” I placed my hand on the doorknob. I breathed him in one last time. “If you’ll excuse me, five a.m. comes early.”

* * *

I skipped my run that next morning. I never did that. I’d had the best sleep of my entire life, courtesy of an earth-shattering orgasm. I was out like a rock.

“Shit.” I popped out of bed, realizing my alarm had never gone off. If it had, I must have turned it off in my sleep. The sun was already out, which meant it was well past seven and I had less than an hour to put myself together and make it downtown to my office.

I took a quick shower and slipped into a navy pencil skirt with matching heels and a cream blouse, reminiscent of the one I’d worn to see Wilder the night before.

An hour later, I was running off the elevator toward my office.

“You okay?” My assistant, Skylar, watched me with big, brown eyes. “You’re, like, never late.”

She was right. I was never late. And the day I hired her, I told her that being ten minutes early to work was still considered late in my book. I’d written her up for being five minutes late before, but now I was going to have to cut her a little slack.

“Brenda wants to have a meeting with you and Kyle,” she said.

“When?”

“Now.” She pointed to the conference room where the door was slightly ajar.

I collected my thoughts and headed in. Impromptu meetings between myself, my boss, Brenda, and my arch nemesis and biggest competitor, Kyle, were never a good thing. Kyle and I had dated for a couple years, but we’d always kept it under wraps. Brenda would have freaked out if she knew and demanded that one of us quit.

It couldn’t be about that, could it?

I wasn’t about to quit, though, and definitely not because I was all love-swept over that nitwit for two years of my life. I was having the best year ever, about to clear a couple of record breaking commissions, which would put me in the top 1% of real estate brokers in all of Manhattan. In a city with over thirty-thousand agents, Kyle and I were both in the top 1%, and Brenda Bliss of Bliss Agency was our boss.

We’d been under her umbrella for a few years, doing all the hard work and schmoozing and selling while she sat back in her expansive corner office and plastered her name on all the signs and billboards and accepted all the awards.

I’d been busy making connections the last few years, but my goal was to have a team of my own very soon, and someday maybe my own agency. My ultimate goal was to become the number-one realtor in the entire city. Last I checked, Kyle and I both teetered back and forth between the seventh and eight spots.

“Morning.” I smoothed my pencil skirt under my thighs and took a seat across from them. They both stopped talking and stared at me as I sat down, as if I’d just interrupted a very important conversation. “What’s this about?”

Brenda’s thin red lips danced into an excited grin as her gaze alternated between us. Kyle’s smirk and too-close proximity to Brenda instantly made my skin crawl. He was constantly pouring the charm on her, and I’d have killed to know if she saw through him. Part of me figured she lapped it up because she was a desperate woman who craved that sort of attention.

“We are courting a very high profile client,” she said. She smelled of excitement, money, unbridled ambition, and greed. She’d get to sit back and steal the glory while we did all the hustling. “I can’t tell you who it is, but he is wanting to interview two members of my team. My best. You two.”

She placed one manicured hand over mine and the other over Kyle’s. She was old enough to be our mother, and if she were, she’d have been the passive-aggressive, guilt-trip-inducing kind. Thank God she never had kids of her own.

“The meeting will be in two weeks,” she said. “You’re lunching at Butter. You’ll each sell yourselves and he’ll pick the person he feels will suit his needs best. I want you on your best behavior. Best clothing. Best presentation. A-game all the way.”

“Always,” Kyle said. I wanted to tell him to wipe the shit off his nose. Instead, I smiled.

“Do we know anything about him?” I asked.

“We know he’s a major, up-and-coming Manhattan real estate investor,” she said. “He has a lot of cash to spend and he wants to spend it quickly.”

“Do we have a name?” Kyle asked.

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “His assistant kept referring to him as Mr. Van Cleef of Van Cleef Investments. I tried looking up his company. They have a website, but I didn’t see anything about staff or an owner or anything. It’s a new company, though, and if we can make him happy, we’ll have a client for life. That’s my motto, guys—you know that.”

“Client for life!” Kyle jabbed his fist into the air triumphantly and Brenda smiled, only I knew he was half-mocking her.

He used to mock her all the time back when we were together, but I had enough wits about me not to badmouth my boss to the man I was sleeping with. He may have been ridiculously good-looking, like a walking talking J. Crew advertisement complete with a New England pedigree, but no one ever accused Kyle Maxwell of having common sense.

He raked his hand through his sandy blond hair and flashed his million-dollar smile at Brenda. His eyes, green and hazel like a fresh caramel apple, flashed with the kind of confidence he’d honed with years of practice. “Don’t worry, Bren, we got this.”

I cringed, remembering how charming I used to find him. Years ago, I was just a junior agent barely making a livable wage. Brenda took a chance on me and brought me on her team while Kyle took me under his wing. At first he treated me like a kid sister and called me “Addi.” I’d always hated that nickname, but it was different when he said it.

“What would we do without our Kyle?” I said with an undercurrent of facetiousness as I folded my hands in my lap and sat up straight. I plastered the fakest smile I could muster across my face as Brenda giggled like a schoolgirl as if being in Kyle’s mere presence was hilarious.

“Better bring it, Addi.” Kyle spoke to me, but his eyes never left Brenda’s. His left hand rested on the table, his titanium wedding band catching the glint of the late afternoon sun. I still couldn’t believe he was married.

My mentorship with Kyle years back had evolved into a relationship lasting just under two years. Our splendor in the grass had come to a screeching halt when I discovered he was sleeping with a select handful of his client; one of which he eventually married. From what I heard, she was old enough to be his mother.

Kyle was a shameless cougar hunter, and I was nothing more than his beard. And to think, all those times he’d held me late at night and told me he loved me and called me “Addi,” I’d thought I was in love.

Now he made me want to throw up a little in my mouth.

All I knew was that I never wanted to feel that way ever again, so I made a commitment to myself and to my job.

“All right, let’s get to work, you two,” Brenda said, winking at Kyle.

I hurried back to my office and fired up my computer. My cell phone buzzed in my pocket with a vaguely familiar looking number.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Addison.”

Oh, God, it was him. The voice that made me cream. I flew to my office door and practically slammed it shut. My heart raced and my face flushed as if the whole world knew what I’d done the night before.

“Why are you calling me, Wilder?” I whispered.

“Why are you whispering?” he whispered back, mocking me.

“I’m at work right now.”

“So am I.”

“Shouldn’t you be working?”

“Don’t you want to know why I’m calling?”

I did and I didn’t. In my heart of hearts, I knew what he wanted. “I told you, I can’t do whatever it is you want to do with me. It was a one-time thing.”

“What can I say to change your mind?”

“I don’t know. You seem to have me figured out pretty well. Why don’t you think of something?”

“That’s the thing,” he said, his voice low and steady. “I can’t figure you out, and it’s driving me insane. I thought I had you pegged, but I realized after you left last night that I’d barely scratched the surface.”

“See, you
do
want to get to know me,” I said. “I know where this leads, Wilder, and I cannot go down this road. Not at this point in my life.”

“I don’t want to date you, Addison,” he said. “I want to own your body. There’s a difference.”

His voice came to growl over the mention of the word “own,” and it made me shiver. I swallowed the lump in my throat, but it returned as quickly as it’d left. My life was stressful, and Wilder could provide a temporarily relief from that.

“Let me think about it,” I sighed, my heart swinging between clinging onto my polished and controlled way of life or running into the arms of the exciting unknown.

I ended the call with Wilder just as an email popped up from my sister.

Don’t forget. Dinner reservations tonight at CRAVE. 7pm. Don’t be late this time!

xoxo,

Coco

I checked my schedule to make sure I didn’t have any showings that night, and fired back a response letting her know I’d be there. On time. She was such a mother hen sometimes, but it was only fitting given our background. She’d pretty much raised me when our mother, Tammy Lynn, spent most nights at the bar or going home with strange men. Coco was only two years older than me, but she always made sure I was fed and clean and got to school on time.