Seducing Chicago, page 9
The barista was cute, a sultry redhead that leaned heavily on the counter, giving him the faintest shadow of a glance down the front of her perfectly proper blouse. If she’d been bursting with energy and leaping to take his order, then he might have turned around and walked away on the spot, but Vegas hotels knew their business. They knew what sort of clientele they had and what they wanted.
“Black, large,” he said gruffly, not particularly surprised at how rough his voice sounded. It had been a long, wonderful night.
The redhead’s lips curled slowly, doing terrible, terrible things to his insides. How very cruel of her to tease him when the simple act of blood flowing was enough to make him ache. Then again, the idea that she might be doing that on purpose…
Yes, she would certainly be making the list in the near future. She seemed like a woman that had a thing or two to teach him, and the opposite was a foregone conclusion. If he could just get her number—
A terrifyingly warm laugh echoed from behind, instantly raising every hair on the back of his neck. He would recognize that laugh anywhere, and the last thing in the world he wanted was to meet its owner. After all, he may not have been a good person, but he wasn’t utterly heartless.
Not waiting for his drink, Harrison strode away without a purpose in mind. He just had to find somewhere to hide, that’s all.
Shit, the bathrooms were the other way. There was nothing in this section but a smattering of booths and tables, less than a quarter occupied, and none by more than one or two people.
He’d just have to sit down at one and blend in. Natasha probably wasn’t going to wander in here after him, but if she did...
Damn, he really had toyed with her, hadn’t he? It would have been easy to tell that bright-eyed woman that he really wasn’t looking for the same sort of commitment that she was. Hell, he’d been in the right about that too, a single week of passion was no reason to assume you were a permanent item. But, as was his way, he’d picked the even easier path and lied that he was leaving town and never coming back. Foolish of him to assume that she’d go back to wherever his home was — and that he’d already forgotten was surely a testament to how not good he was — but there you have it: Harrison Siegel could be quite the foolish man if pressed.
Which table to take though? Probably not one with a dangerous bastard like himself. The last thing he needed was to get into a fistfight, and not just because that would surely draw Natasha’s attention, with those soft green eyes...
Shit, he was even starting to remember bits and pieces about her. That was never permissible.
His eye snagged on a timid little creature of a woman, not quite huddled up in the corner of a booth, but damn close. She watched everything with wide-eyed wonder, and he instantly knew her type. Harrison did not like tourists, and that went now more than ever. She had definitely watched his arrival, and if Natasha wandered in, she’d likely notice the same thing and ask this girl if a furtive bastard of a man with too many tattoos and reeking of booze and sweat had fled through here. And so, with his drunken haze not quite completely dispelled by fear and adrenaline, Harrison sat down across from her in the booth, ensuring that his back was to the rest of the room and that shadows covered the most obvious of his features.
“New in town?” he asked with a cheery suaveness that was painfully difficult to fake for a man like him, especially in a state such as his.
Her eyes widened, and her shocked silence gave him plenty of time to admire everything past her immediate usefulness to his schemes. The contrast between her hair and skin was nothing short of startling, with violently red waves cascading down one shoulder while her skin was pale enough that she couldn’t have stepped outside in the past month. Her lips drew him, but that was nothing new. He always did enjoy imagining just what a woman was capable of right off the bat. Fewer disappointments that way.
She was definitely a tourist, that much was abundantly clear. The way she looked at him was borderline offensive, for he was absolutely certain that she was viewing him as an exciting look into the denizens of a dangerous den of vice and sin. If she had any common sense, she’d be looking for an escape route or perhaps a way to signal the barista for help.
But no, she was just staring at him with those big, beautiful...
Harrison sighed. Having a healthy sex drive could be quite the pain in the ass sometimes, but it was much more a pain in the dick at times like these.
Chapter 2
“New here?” he prompted again.
To her credit, she didn’t jump out of her seat in surprise and embarrassment, which had happened a couple of times with the touristy types. Instead, she just nodded numbly. Harrison sensed that it was mostly sheer chance that her jaw wasn’t on the floor.
“Are you an actor?”
Whatever he had been expecting her to say, that was most definitely not it.
“Beg your pardon?”
“An actor, you know, like the….” Her voice dropped as she leaned across the table, very nearly conspiratorially. “The shows. The performances? Is this one of them right now? Is it like a spontaneous little show?”
Harrison was mental inches away from raising an exasperated hand to an even more exasperated face, but then he caught himself.
“Yeah, something like that,” he said with a wry grin. “I’m surprised you caught on so quick. You’ve got a good eye, you know that? Very perceptive.”
She blushed, just as he knew she would. It was unfortunate that she was so easy to pin down. She really was quite lucky that she’d run into him before anyone else that might take real advantage of her naivete. Hell, was this her first day in town or something?
“Cause that’s what we’re all about in Vegas, spontaneous entertainment out of the goodness of our hearts,” he said quickly, adding some much-needed bitterness to prevent his heart from showing too much.
“Oh no, I thought you’d politely but firmly ask for donations afterward,” she said without blinking.
Harrison was momentarily taken aback, but only momentarily. He couldn’t help but chuckle. “Well, maybe I pegged you wrong then. Sounds like you’re not quite as defenseless as you might have first seemed.”
“Certainly not!” With that, she lowered her voice and looked around before whispering. “Am I doing alright? I’m not exactly sure what kind of role I’m supposed to be playing here. If I’m being honest, I haven’t exactly done this sort of thing before.”
“One would never guess,” Harrison said dryly. He dared a glance behind him, but there was no sign of Natasha. Maybe she’d left, and this was all just a big coincidence. Or perhaps she was hunting him down in every hotel she could find. Terrifying.
“So, what exactly do you need me to do?”
He turned his attention back to the girl. Actually, on second thought, was she a girl? He’d pegged her as unduly young and wet behind the ears, but she had to be over twenty, right? She certainly didn’t look like she was fresh out of high school.
“Well, it’s actually not all that complicated. You see, this isn’t a big performance, and really, it’s just for you.”
“Me?” She breathed the word so softly that Harrison nearly closed his eyes just to focus on it.
“Yes, you. You see, it’s a bit of a… well, I’m not sure how else to put it, but I’m supposed to give you an experience. You know, to pay attention to you and such. Just for a few minutes,” he added hastily, lest he give yet another woman the wrong idea.
“But why?”
Harrison eyed her but couldn’t quite make heads or tails of her reaction. She sounded neither disappointed nor excited. If anything, she sounded… curious? Though he wracked his mind, he couldn’t remember a single time that a woman had treated him with simple curiosity, especially not when he was sitting alone with her in a booth with lighting that could easily be described as romantic, and especially not when he’d just made such a bald-faced overture.
“Why what?”
“I mean, what’s the angle? This seems overly intimate for a crowd-pleasing performance, and how are you supposed to get a bunch of donations if I’m the only one who really experiences it? The whole thing doesn’t seem like an efficient scheme.”
“It’s…” he mentally backpedaled, in more ways than one. Somehow, he didn’t think that the last vestiges of his whiskey binge was to blame for this disorientation. “It’s to make you feel more at ease so that you go to a casino later and spend lots of money.”
“But this hotel doesn’t have a casino.”
“It has a partnership with the one next door,” he lied without hesitation. “The idea is the same as the cheap prime rib dinners, it’s all to funnel you over there. And besides, the theory is that you wouldn’t keep this to yourself, right? You’d tell other people that this wonderful experience happened to you, and then you’d go home and tell the same thing to people there, and they’d book trips to Vegas immediately.”
It frightened him how easily it was to come up with such manipulation, both in terms of what he was doing to this girl and the feasibility of such a plan for running a casino. He was thinking more and more like his father, and that could not be permitted.
Still, she seemed a little dubious at his explanation, which eased his mind somewhat. Maybe she wouldn’t get chewed up and spit out by the City of Sin. Maybe she would get back on her flight to whatever small town she hailed from. All she would have to remember her little adventure would be a mysterious conversation with an enigmatic tattooed man in a hotel cafe at three in the morning.
Closer to four, he corrected as he checked his phone.
And then he heard her voice. It would seem that he hadn’t been lucky enough for this all to be a coincidence.
“So, darling, tell me how your vacation to Vegas has been so far.” He leaned forward, focusing the breadth of his considerable attention upon her. It was a technique that had never failed him to date, and this was looking to be no exception.
Her eyes widened, and for an instant, he almost felt ashamed that he was doing this without even asking the girl’s name. On second thought, that was ridiculous. He’d done far more with women that he’d exchanged far fewer words with.
“It’s been…” she trailed off as she glanced over his shoulder and frowned. Damn, she was definitely watching the approach of Natasha.
“She’s part of the performance,” Harrison reassured her, immediately drawing her gaze back to him. Perfect.
“Oh.” The girl frowned, which was all too becoming on those lips. “But she looks so angry.”
Harrison suppressed a sigh. “Yes, well, she’s very good at her job. Now, tell me where you’ve visited so far. Had any wild nights of debauchery yet? Lost or won any fortunes at roulette? Or are you more of a poker kind of gal?”
Her eyes widened further with every word, and by the end of his questioning, her lips were parted. How on earth was he still able to get harder? A mystery to be solved another day, that.
“N-no, my flight just got in this evening. I went up to my room to sleep, but I guess I was too excited, or my body hadn’t adjusted to the hours, so I came down here to people watch.”
“Just a word to the wise, you might not want to tell strangers exactly where you’re staying. Especially strange men.”
She frowned at that. He really should get around to asking her name at some point. “But I’m here, sitting in the hotel’s cafe. Doesn’t that obviously mean I’m staying here?”
“Hardly. Plenty of people come to visit hotels for… one reason or another.” No need to explain that he knew that from firsthand experience, especially not that his latest experience in that department wasn’t even half an hour old. Hell, she could probably smell it on him if she put her mind to it.
“For… that?” From the expression on her face, she understood him well enough.
Perversely, Harrison felt a compulsion to sit around and chat with her about nothing at all. It was rare to run into a girl that didn’t treat him with a combination of longing and fear. Hell, it was rare for him to run into anyone that didn’t see him first and foremost as a walking bad reputation.
What did this girl see him as, anyway? Did she think everything about him was a ruse? That he was just an actor playing a part? Ha, she probably even thought his tattoos were props for the job, temporaries that would wash off later. Wouldn’t that be something?
“She’s coming over here,” she whispered quickly, dragging him out from his uncharacteristic daydreams. “What should I say?”
“You—” Harrison caught himself. His original plan of lying low and blending in was now thoroughly shot. There was no way that this girl would be able to keep a straight face and play dumb at this point. One look at her, and Natasha would know that she’d found who she was looking for. Time for Plan B, then.
He took a deep breath and looked her square in the eye. What would have been trivially easy last night, or even a few hours ago, now felt oddly immoral. Probably due to the exact nature of his dispute with Natasha, but it wasn’t like the girl in front of him was a nutjob that would lose it when she found out this wasn’t real. Probably.
“You should act interested in me, and I will act interested in you. Very interested.”
She blushed, but then her brow furrowed, and she looked at him with deep concern. “Er, this is all an act, right? She’s not your girlfriend, and you’re toying with her, right?”
Shit, she was a little more intuitive than he’d thought. Well, at least he could answer that without explicitly lying.
“She is not my girlfriend,” he ground out, reaching over to take her hand in his. It wasn’t for comfort or to insist on the point to her, he told himself. It was just a matter of falling into the roles that the two of them were to play, that was all. Nothing more. Really.
Her face lit up at that. He was torn between surprise at how cute she looked, agitation at his own desire to stretch the moment out for as long as possible, and an overprotective irritation at how quick she was to trust.
“So, how exactly do we do this?” she asked.
“Do this?” His words came out slowly, his thoughts still lingering on the conflict within himself.
“Yeah, are we supposed to snuggle up, or kiss, or am I supposed to get under the table and…”
That snapped him back to the present. His mouth suddenly felt inexplicably dry. “And?”
He’d thought that her teasing him with naughty words was the most erotic thing she could have done. He realized his error as soon as she blushed and looked away. The poor thing couldn’t even make eye contact with him after saying something so bald and bold.
It would have been entirely in character for Harrison to tease her. Still, he felt a stab of pity that bordered on overprotectiveness. Heavens, what was the matter with him.
“No, nothing like that,” he said, but his hand slipped across the table to settle atop hers. After all, he did have an objective here.
“Oh, thank goodness,” she breathed out heavily, looking up to meet his gaze once more.
He wasn’t sure if she was looking at him like he was the funniest man in the world or most charming or most charitable, but none of them were acceptable. At least, they weren’t acceptable in any circumstances but the ones they currently found themselves in. Truly, she was playing the part magnificently and without even realizing it. Hopefully, he hadn’t misjudged Natasha’s capacity for murder like he’d misjudged her level of interest in him.
“For a second there, I was really worried, and I don’t really do stuff like… that,” she trailed off pitifully. Interesting. She couldn’t even mention that sort of thing when she wasn’t being ostensibly pressured.
What an uncomfortable sensation. Until a few minutes ago, Harrison had been quite secure in the notion that he liked his women experienced, jaded, and utterly shameless. It would seem that his body was rather at odds with his brain on this particular issue.
“Do you mean to say you’ve never done stuff like… that.” He couldn’t help but tease her, even going so far as to imitate her embarrassed fidgeting.
She sputtered, which may have been what he expected, but he most definitely didn’t expect his own visceral pleasure at the sight.
“Come now, a pretty girl like you must have had a boyfriend or two.”
How odd that he found his hand under the table making a fist. Being jealous of the hypothetical boyfriend of a woman that he’d only just met? That was beyond the pale, even for a possessive bastard like him. Christ, he really needed to put a stop to this before she actually responded to his teasing.
“So, where exactly is Natasha now?” he asked conversationally. Still, he couldn’t resist reaching over and taking her hand atop the table, trying very, very hard not to think about how soft her skin felt against his calluses.
She peered past him, seemingly far more engrossed in the answer to that question than the facts of what he’d just done. Anyone who wasn’t holding her hand wouldn’t have noticed how warm and trembling she was.
“Standing by the door and looking impatient. She’s checking her phone and—”
“Got it.”
Well, that wasn’t a good sign. Harrison may not have spent all that long around Natasha, but he had picked up that she fidgeted with her phone when she was exceptionally frustrated. That really only made sense, considering the majority of his interactions with her had involved various levels of rage and indignation on her part.
Only then did he realize that an oddly heavy silence had stretched out between him and his odd partner of circumstance. One good questioning stare solved that quickly enough.
“Is… is her name really Natasha?”
Harrison blinked. “Of course. Why would I make something like that up?”
She waved her free hand frantically but still suitably subtly that it didn’t attract too much attention. However, he was far more focused on the feel of her other hand.
“I wasn’t accusing you of making anything up,” she whispered hastily but then regained control of herself. “What I meant was that she doesn’t really act like a Natasha.”
