The First Night (3 page)

“Do you even know where she lives?”

“Of course I do.” Furious with Sharon, not wanting to hear her voice more than he had to, Gannon lied. Different scenarios darted through his head as to how he could successfully get Kayla home, noting to himself he was clueless to the vicinity of her house. He looked at her unconscious body. She would definitely be no help.

The man under Sharon whispered in her ear. “Fine,” Sharon said, and she turned to kiss the man fully on the mouth. A few seconds later, she gave her attention back to Gannon. “But nothing had better happen to her. She’s my friend, and if you do something to her...”

Gannon shook his head, Sharon was unbelievable. “Are you kidding me?” He scoffed. “What do expect me to do, Sharon, take advantage of her? No chance.” He glared at the four of them individually, taking his time, and making certain each one knew he was serious. “Which I might add, is something I can’t say for any of you.”

Chapter 3

Kayla opened her eyes and rolled over to blinding, head-splitting sunlight. She winced and covered her face with the blanket. For a few minutes she lay still with her eyes closed. Inhaling deeply, she smelled an amazing scent—a mixture of musk and faint cinnamon—that made her breath catch even with the pounding in her head. That smell, scrumptious as it was, told her she was not in her own bed.

She peeked from under the foreign covers, and despite already knowing she wasn’t in her room, at the sight of the unfamiliar, she shot straight up. Immediately, she regretted the sudden movement. Her head throbbed, but she looked through the pain at the gray paint coating the walls. Dark wooden furniture spun around her. She gazed at the navy blue comforter, unconsciously rolling the corner between her index finger and thumb. Disoriented, and maybe still a little drunk, she fought against the thumping and swirling in her head.

She tossed the blanket off, relieved to find she was still wearing last night’s clothes, sans shoes. “Where am I?” she quietly asked, speaking to no one. She was alone.

Kayla scooted off the bed and picked her shoes up off the floor. She faced three closed doors.
Surely one is the bathroom.
She gripped the knob of the first one and turned it…the closet. She tried the next and sighed in relief…the bathroom.
Thank God!

She splashed her face with water, wiped away her smudged eye makeup, and smoothed her hair.
Is there any chance I’ll get out of here unseen?
She took a deep breath and opened the third door. As she did, a sweet smell filled the air, bringing back a rush of memories, though they were jumbled and impossible to place. She tossed them from her mind, too hungover to pay them attention, and slowly followed the scent down the hall, doing her best to recall anything that had happened the night before—after her second trip to the bar.

It was blank.

A void.

A never-ending abyss that gave her no knowledge of whose house she might be in. Or who was cooking breakfast.

When she came to the end of the hall and rounded the corner she was forced to plant her right hand against the wall for stability.
Damn tequila!

She wanted to hide. Or run. Or put on an invisible cloak. Or snap her fingers and disappear. The bartender. The hot bartender with smoldering eyes was maneuvering through the kitchen. As he turned around, she did her best to wipe the shock from her face in hopes of leaving her expression illegible.

“Hey light-weight.” His full lips turned up, showing a hint of teeth. He stood there barefoot, with nothing on but thin, gray, cotton, drawstring pajama pants. They sat low on his hips, showing off the well-defined v-shape of his lower torso, boasting more of his tan body than she thought she could handle. Despite her headache and the searing mortification of waking in his bed, Kayla found herself wanting to peel the pants off of him.

She dropped her head to look at the floor in order to give her mouth a chance to close. “Sorry about that, I don’t drink much.” Horror went over her. She couldn’t remember his name.
Gavin? Gammil? Garrett? Ugh! Embarrassing!

As if he were able to see the pulsing in her head, he went to the cabinet and pulled out a package of BC powder, tossing it on the kitchen island. “You’ll need water,” he said, filling a glass at the sink and setting it beside the hangover meds. When she didn’t reach for the glass, he added, “The sooner you take this, the sooner you’ll feel better.”

Once she choked it down, she said, “Thanks. I need to get going.”
Because I can’t remember your name and I don’t want to ask, and I don’t even know how I got here…or where ‘here’ is.

“Food…you need food. It’ll help, and not to brag or anything, but I am a master pancake chef.”

Unable to turn down her favorite food ever, she allowed the smell to compromise her judgment. “Yeah? Well, I happen to be a pancake connoisseur, so I guess I’ll have to be the judge of that.” She leaned against the counter and dropped her shoes on the floor.

“Challenge accepted.” He grinned, and it lit up his eyes.

The bartender moved to the stove top, his back to her, and she admired his every move. It was hard not to. His broad shoulders alone commanded attention and his back, lean and toned, showed every muscle as he worked.

Kayla caught herself before she fell into a drooling trance, and cleared her throat in an attempt to simultaneously clear her head. “I have a question.”

“What’s that?” He turned and looked at her quizzically as he moved close to set a short stack of pancakes in front of her. He didn’t back away. He stayed close.

The heat from his body made Kayla’s skin tingle, and she had a hard time not staring at his chest from the corner of her eye. Smooth and strong. She pictured her hands on him.
Ugh! Concentrate. What is wrong with you?

Forcing her gaze not to stray from the plate, she took a bite of food. The pancakes were fabulous. “Mm…these are really good. Are you not eating?” She took another mouthful, hoping the mundane gesture of eating would dull the energy that was obviously building toward him.

“That’s your question? Am I eating? You got all tensed up for that?”

Was it that obvious he made her nervous? She chose to ignore his comment. “No…I mean…it
was
a question. Not the one I planned to ask though.” She sounded like a blubbering idiot. The bartender stepped away, taking his heat with him, and Kayla let out air she didn’t know she was holding. “I just, well, I don’t remember much of what happened last night…after I left the bar for the second time.”
Damn tequila!

He snorted under his breath. “Yeah, you were pretty hammered.”

She felt him soaking her in and turned so that her entire body faced his. Her gaze went to the scribe tattoo on his arm…
Never Forget.
She took a deep breath, mentally preparing for the answer to the question she didn’t want to ask but knew she needed to. “What happened last night?”

“What do you mean?”

Why was he insisting on specifics? Humiliating.

“Between us?” He answered his own question while regarding the expression on her face, which she could only presume to be one of disgrace. “Let’s see.” He tilted his head, his right index finger lingering on his lips as if in deep thought. “First, you passed out on the table. Your orgy-loving friend, what is her name? Oh, yes. Sharon. She insisted on taking you home, but I struggled with trusting her. There was no way I was going to let her have you. So, I brought you here.”

Let her have me?

A sweet grin formed across his lips. “What’s wrong?”

She wiped the look of confusion from her face. “Nothing. I’m just surprised, I guess. Is that all?”

He laughed, his dark eyes sparking with light. “Oh, no, there’s more, but by the look on your face, I’m not sure you can handle it.”

“I can handle it,” she said, though she wasn’t certain. She racked her brain, trying to recall any information that would shock her, but failed. There was nothing.

The shirtless bartender stepped closer, and her breath hitched. He gave a glimmer of a smile. Sardonic maybe, she didn’t know. It was too fast to read.

“As soon as we walked in the door, you tried to take me on the couch,” he said, his seductive eyes holding hers, and her heart thumped in her throat. His voice was low, mellow music in her ears despite him describing such horrific behavior. “I turned you down, and you got seriously pissed.” He shrugged as if what he’d just said were no big deal.

Kayla stood there, jaw at the floor, eyes wide, and frozen, inches away from him.

The right corner of his mouth turned up slightly. “And then you passed out…again.” The bartender reached by her to the partly eaten stack of pancakes, and with her fork, cut himself off a bite.

Kayla moved past the embarrassment and found the strength to speak. “I don’t…I’m so sorry.” She dropped her head, face flushed and heated, hands shaking.

“Hey,” he said, his voice soothing and apologetic. “Are you upset? I wasn’t trying to embarrass you.”

“No. I mean, yeah. I am upset but only because I acted that way. I asked you to tell me. It’s my fault.”

“When I first saw you last night, I never pictured refusing you. Hell, I never imagined you would end up in my apartment. But here you are.”

Shit! Those are serious words.
“Not by choice.” Kayla raised her eyebrows.

“What else could I do? I don’t know where you live. And you were…look, maybe some of what I said wasn’t true. I didn’t know it would affect you so badly.” He put his head down and looked at her under his lashes. “I’m not sure I could have gotten that lucky. You know, you, tearing off my clothes.”

Kayla’s face went serious, and she wanted to be angry, but looking at him—remorseful and oh so scorching hot—she did want to tear off his clothes. From the moment she first saw the bartender, there was something about him. Something that entrapped her free will. She found herself drawn to him like nothing she’d experienced before, and the fact he hadn’t taken advantage of her vulnerable state made her want him even more.

She wasn’t surprised, nor did she attempt to stop her fingers as they inexorably traced the waistline of his pants. He took in a short breath at her touch, and she smiled. His skin felt as good as it looked—velvety, and warm, and wonderful. She looked up at his face. His expression was cryptic and ardent at the same time. She couldn’t turn away.

What was she doing? She’d never been so forward, at least not with someone she’d just met. It took a mental battle with her hands but she was able to pry her fingers from his skin and drop them, letting her hands dangle limp at her sides.

She inhaled deeply, her insides shaking. “I think I should go.” Her eyes went over his bare shoulders, strong and tan and smooth. She rethought her statement, knowing she didn’t want to leave, intimidated by, yet craving what might happen if she stayed. “Thanks for breakfast, and…um…by the way, where am I?”

“I’m thinking, you’re in the exact place you should be.” Holding her gaze, he closed in on the already not-so-spacious gap between them. His heat, his smell…God, his smell, musk and barely-there cinnamon, it was dizzying. Her determination to leave moments ago became imperceptible, and her mind was left with nothing but thoughts of his hands, his mouth on her body.

“Leaving would be smart,” she said shakily. His hips, his glorious half-covered hips, grazed against her. She knew how his bare skin felt at the touch of her fingers, a hint of him was still there, and her legs became weak at the thought of him pressed against her. His top half, bare and delicious, hovered mere centimeters away, and his knowing eyes drifted to her lips and held fast.

“Smart?”

“Yes.”

“Last night…getting that drunk...was not
smart
,” he said, his smile mocking playfully, his hands pressing into the counter top on either side of her.

She laughed to cover her nervousness, loving the feel of being trapped so close to him, and hating it at the same time.
His name, what in the hell is his name?
“I was in rare form last night.”
Damn tequila!

“And now?”

He didn’t give her time to answer as he bent down meeting her mouth. His tongue worked hers, frantic and intense. Her knees, giving out, went into immediate gel-mode. She grabbed the counter’s edge behind her for stability. His fingers wound in her hair, and he wrenched her in, cinching their bodies together. She gasped at his heat.

Touching him, she knew, would lead to more, and she wanted more. She wanted all of him. But she’d never slept with someone she didn’t know. Since high school graduation, she’d only been in a few relationships, and she hadn’t even slept with all of them.

What if sex was all she needed? And that’s what this was, right? A guy she had left a bar with? Isn’t this how it happens? She pried her mouth from his, examining his face. His lips were red and wet, his eyes dark, hungry…for her. Kayla’s center tightened and she swallowed hard.
Fuck it!

Her hands went behind his head, pulling him back to her.
Oh, please, take me now,
her mind silently pleaded.

As if he were reading her thoughts, in one quick swoop, he leaned past her, swiping everything from the counter. Her plate crashed to the floor, and the sound of shattering ceramic against the stone tile floor reverberated in her ears as he lifted her and sat her on the edge.

Her eyes went wide, and she gasped, unable to hinder the breath catching in her throat at the feel of his waist between her legs.
He moves fast!
His eyes narrowed slightly, and he grinned with amusement. She leaned in to kiss him, but he averted her lips and nuzzled her neck, kissing and licking and nibbling her skin. She moaned low, barely audible, tilting her head and giving him more access.

“Rare form?” he asked into her neck.

It took a second for his words to register. “You have no idea.” She shivered at the touch of his fingers brushing the skin just beneath her blouse, across her lower back.