Yet Noah sat with Natalie sharing a giant hot fudge sundae. Five scoops of vanilla ice cream, a glob of hot fudge, a sprinkling of nuts and two cherries on top. They each had a spoon and were digging tentatively into the mountain of ice cream. Natalie couldn’t stop smiling and every time she licked her spoon, Noah died a little inside. He could imagine her perfect little pink tongue licking the tip of his dick and it was getting damn distracting.
“You’re letting me pay you back, right?” she asked nonchalantly after licking her spoon clean of hot fudge for what felt like the hundredth time. He knew there was nothing casual about her question no matter how much she tried to portray it as no big deal. She didn’t want to owe him anything. He liked that about her.
A lot.
“You don’t owe me a thing,” he said just as nonchalantly, hoping she’d let this go. He didn’t want her money. He gave her two thousand dollars and she’d made it last for almost two hours. He’d only wanted to cut her off because he’d been growing bored. Not with her, never with her, but hell. He didn’t want to spend the rest of the night in the high rollers room, gambling their asses off.
He wanted to take her back to his suite so they could sweat their asses off instead. Naked. In his bed.
She shoved her spoon into the ice cream and glared at him from across the table. He swore she had a smudge of chocolate in the corner of her mouth. Damn it, he wanted to lick it off, but she was too far away. “I do too. I won enough money to cover what I lost of yours. Please let me reimburse you.”
“This isn’t a business transaction,” he muttered, irritated that she kept insisting to pay him off. He knew she had enough to cover what he gave her. When she cashed out, they gave her over twenty-six thousand dollars, and part of that money was what he originally gave her. She would still walk away with most of her winnings, but she’d have to pay taxes on that amount.
Natalie pulled the spoon from the mountain of ice cream and licked off the remnants. God, he wanted that tongue of hers on him so bad it was tearing him apart. “You’re a very stubborn man.”
“And you’re a very stubborn woman.” He plucked the remaining cherry off the top of the ice cream and brought it to his lips, pausing. He’d already eaten one. “Can I have your cherry?”
She blushed, which was cute. And sexy. “You made that sound dirty.”
“I didn’t mean it to be.” He so did. “You’re the one with the dirty mind, sweetheart.”
Her blush deepened in color, her cheeks turning bright red. “No one has ever accused me of having a dirty mind before.”
He contemplated her, what she said. “Maybe it’s because you haven’t met the right man yet,” he finally told her.
She said nothing, her entire body going still, her blue eyes wide and unblinking. Did he just shock the hell out of her? He sort of hoped he did. He was in the mood to shock. Stimulate. Drive her out of her ever lovin’ mind.
All she had to do was look at him and he felt like he was going crazy with wanting her.
“Please don’t lie to me and tell me you’re the right man,” she murmured, slowly shaking her head. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. This is just a one-night thing, right? If it’s even a thing?”
“You want it to be a thing?” He dug his spoon into the ice cream, his appetite suddenly coming at him with a vengeance. He was hungry. Starved. Not just for food but for...
Natalie.
?
?A one-night thing,” she said carefully, heavy emphasis on the word one. He was fine with that. It was all he could commit to, one night. When would he ever see her again? And she was being the typical fan girl, offering herself to him. He hated that he sounded like a smug bastard, but this happened to him all the damn time. “Though honestly, I’ve never done that sort of thing before.”
Was this some kind of line? If so, he thought he’d heard them all. “What sort of thing?” He frowned.
“A one-night thing.” She rolled her eyes. They were talking in circles. “You don’t do commitment, right? You’re a love ’em and leave ’em kind of guy. At least, that’s what I’ve read in the tabloids.”
Yeah. He was. There was no use denying it. So why did it hurt his pride to hear her say that so casually? Like her expectations were already low? And why in the hell was he offended? He was being a total jackass and needed to get over himself. “That’s my usual plan, yeah.”
“You’ve never had a girlfriend.” She shoved a spoonful of ice cream in her mouth right after she said that, looking guilty. Was she fishing for information?
Probably. They all did. More like they all wanted to be the one to change him. To turn him into a commitment type of guy.
It wasn’t in him. He couldn’t force himself to stay with one woman. None of them appealed enough for him to give up everything, his entire lifestyle, just to be with them.
“No. I don’t do girlfriends,” he said, his voice clipped. Damn it, he was losing his patience and that wasn’t good. “They’re too clingy. They always want what I can’t give them.”
She visibly flinched, and he tried not to feel bad about that, but…he did. “And what’s that?”
“Loyalty. Stability. Love.” He clamped his lips shut, not meaning to say that last word. Love didn’t exist. It never really had in his world. His dad had been a real bastard. His mother, a drunk who looked at her sons as her meal ticket out of poverty. She knew they had musical talent and decent looks, but it was their father who pushed them into a career at a young age.
Their first manager had taken advantage of them financially and ripped them off. The next manager put Noah and his brother Rick into a boy band, which released one single before they split up.