There was a split second when my heart skipped a beat. Having sex with a stranger… Well, it had an attraction. It was dangerous, illicit, maybe hot. I wasn’t about to admit this to my sister, but often when I was alone in bed with my fingers between my legs, I pictured having sex with a man I’d just met. He’d be gorgeous, and we’d barely speak, and we’d have hot, raunchy sex until I came. It was my go-to fantasy, to tell the truth.
But a fantasy was all it was. The reality was different. The reality was some guy who talked too much or told dumb jokes, or whose gaze crawled all over me, or me not knowing what to say. Then—if we even got that far—his not-so-clean bedroom in the tiny apartment he shared with roommates, who were pretending to watch TV while they listened on the other side of the wall. And if we got that far, the reality was awkward sex that lasted a few minutes and was completely unsatisfying. Followed by an embarrassing walk of shame past the roommates, who were still sitting on the couch. And all of that was aside from the fact that the whole thing could be dangerous if the guy was a violent creep.
The fantasy was much, much better.
I shook my head. I was twenty-nine, successful, and rational. I was going to be smart about this. “Emma, I appreciate your help. I do. And I think you’re probably right that I need to meet someone. But a one-night stand is not what I need. Meaningless sex is fine, but for me it just isn’t the answer.”
“Mmm,” Emma said, still looking at her phone. “That’s too bad.”
“Are you even listening to me?”
“Yeah, I am.” She finally tapped her phone dark and looked up at me. “You said that meaningless sex isn’t the answer, and I said that’s too bad. Which it is. Because it’s too late.”
“Too late? What does that mean?”
“It means I just went on Tinder and got you a date. He’s going to be here in twenty minutes.”
Seven
Aidan
* * *
After the day I’d had, I knew what would get me out of the funk I was in. It was the same thing that got me out of a funk every time. I really, really needed to fuck someone.
How long had it been? The last time had been a woman I’d met in a first-class airport lounge. Our flight was delayed and we spent some time talking. She told me her name was Rita, which was either a lovely name or an equally lovely lie—I hadn’t cared which. When we got off the flight in Miami, she’d taken me to her hotel room near the airport. I didn’t know her, and she didn’t know me.
Two strangers. Completely anonymous, and only there to please each other for as long as it took to get off. Th
at was the way I liked it.
Except I hadn’t particularly liked it.
I mean, it had been fine. Me, a willing woman, both of us naked. It had all the ingredients of a pleasant hour. There’d been physical satisfaction for both of us with minimal awkwardness. No expectations and no exchange of phone numbers. Pleasant, polite farewells when we were finished and I was dressed again.
It was my usual routine. I had never had a girlfriend, only the occasional encounter with an attractive woman. It happened a few times a year at most, when the pressure and the need became unbearable. I liked to be in complete control of my sex life; what that said about me, I had no idea.
A number of those women had made it clear they’d be open to more. Women try to get into Aidan’s pants, and Aidan says no, Dane had said, and he wasn’t entirely wrong. Most of those women would be wonderful partners—for some other man. But I was busy with my job as CEO of Tower VC, I was choosy, and I had no need to fuck all the time. It messed with my control. Besides, any woman who dated me would be in the eye of a lot of publicity, and I had no desire for wealthy divorcees, rake-thin models, or any of the other types the society pages expected to see me with.
So I kept to the routine. My sister, Ava, was the only constant woman in my life, and I only saw her when I took her for dinner a few times a year. You’re a loner, Aidan, she’d said to me once. Lots of guys say they’re a loner, but you’re the real thing. It was how I liked it.
And yet, that last time in Miami had been… unsatisfying. Rita had enjoyed herself, but to me it had felt mechanical. Practiced. Almost tawdry. Even though I’d gotten off, I’d left as unsatisfied as I’d been when we started. Maybe even more so, and I had no idea why.
That had been months ago—nearly six months, I realized now when I did the calculation. No wonder I was so restless, unable to stay home at night, and irritable with idiots like the Egerton brothers. No wonder I was making rash decisions and fixating on Samantha’s sexy goddamned shoes. No wonder I was still pissed off hours after I’d kicked out the Egertons, still so angry I couldn’t talk to Samantha directly. I needed to let off some steam, and tonight I would do it the usual way.
I walked into a midtown watering hole and made my way toward the bar. I was incognito tonight: jeans, dark gray T-shirt, dark brown leather jacket, baseball cap. I often picked up women like this, so they didn’t know they were sleeping with the famous Aidan Winters. Dressed like this, not a single soul would recognize me. When you were known all over town as the Man in Black, people only saw the clothes, which made it easy to wear a disguise. It was the Clark Kent effect. If I’d added glasses, I would probably have been completely unidentifiable, even to my closest friends.
But there was something else to the disguise I wore. Even though I was a success, even though I had a life that most people would envy—sometimes I chafed at being me. I wasn’t born rich or powerful. I’d been a too-thin teenager from a crappy home when I’d run away at fifteen and bunked in with three of my runaway friends. We’d lived on next to nothing for years, barely staying off the streets and making ends meet. I was a different man now, but deep down I was still that teenager. I was still that kid looking for his next meal or looking for a fight. Penthouses and big offices were nice, but sometimes I needed to escape them. Sometimes I needed to be someone else for a while.
It was why I left my schedule blank most evenings and kept it to myself. The life I lived could own most of me, but it would never own all of me.
I stepped up to the bar and ordered a draft. It was mostly an after-work crowd of locals here, west of the tourist spots near Times Square and south of the upper-class bars where people would expect to see someone like me. These were New Yorkers, coming off work and letting off steam before stumbling home to do it all over again.
It was the perfect place to find a stranger to sleep with.
Because the other me, the poor me—he liked sleeping with strangers as much as the rich me did. At least, he always had.
I noticed a woman watching me from the other end of the bar. She was leaning against the bar top with one elbow, waiting for the bartender to fill her order. She had brown hair cut just above her shoulders and lightly curled. A heart-shaped face and nice eyes lined with dark makeup. A light sweater that hugged her curves. She was pretty, sexy in a rather wholesome way, and she had definitely noticed me. In other words, she was exactly what I was looking for.