“At lunch,” Wes finished and shook the guy’s hand.
“What can I get you?” Roméo asked.
“Two Jäger Bombs,” Wes said.
Roméo nodded and turned toward the bottles lining the mirrored wall.
Wes lowered his gaze to Rubi’s again. Held it a moment. “Have you fucked him?”
Her brows flicked together. “Who? Roméo?” She laughed, the sound light, as if the thought were ludicrous. “No. We’re friends.”
“Right. Friends or sex. Not both.”
“That’s my motto.”
“What about threesomes?” he asked. “Is that your scene?”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s what I said. Someone propositioned me, said she’d hit you up for a threesome if I was interested.”
Her lips parted, shock and dismay in her expression. “Who was that?”
“A blonde named Andrea.”
Rubi shook her head. “I don’t know her, so she can’t know me.”
“So that’s not why you come here? So you can fuck outside the box?”
She laughed, the sound bubbling with both humor and shock. “You do have a special way with words. I already told you why I come here.” Her eyes narrowed in speculation. “The question is…why are you here? Testing your boundaries?”
“Maybe I’m testing yours.” Wes eased to the stool beside her and looked directly into her eyes. “Haven’t decided on a guy to take home yet?”
“No. But I can guarantee it won’t be you.”
He grinned at her feistiness. “I don’t remember asking.”
“Touché. Why aren’t you still with Bolton?”
“Because the man is a lush and can’t hold his liquor. I dumped him home an hour ago, after he started another brawl at Shooters. Busted up the place pretty good.”
“How’d you keep him out of jail?”
“I paid for damages and bribed the manager.”
“That’s my sweet country boy. Taking care of everyone. Making things right.”
“My mama would disagree. She’d tell you I was trouble from the day I was born.” He shifted on his stool, moving closer to Rubi. “And since I know you love trouble as much as I do, I have a proposition for you.”
Her brows rose in question.
“You and me. Friends with benefits.” He lifted his hand in a stop gesture. “But…benefits do not include threesomes.”
“Not into multiple partners?”
“I’ve always had a problem sharing my toys.”
She broke out into laughter.
The sight and sound filled his chest with carbonation. “I think that’s a yes.”
She shook her head and made a derogatory sound in her throat. “That proposition sounds dubious at best.”
“I think it sounds like someone might be chicken.”
Her gaze transitioned into a glare. “I hate the way you do that.”
“You can never turn down a challenge. It’s your greatest weakness. I love that about you.”
She turned toward him and rested her elbow on the bar. “Lawson, have you even had a one-night hookup—ever? In your entire life?”
A lick of embarrassment heated his face. Stupid, yeah, but real. “What difference does that make?”
“I think it makes a lot of difference considering you’re trying to start nothing but a series of one-night hookups with me.”
“Friends with benefits is not a series of one-night hookup. There is no series in one-night hookup, Russo. Hence the title: One-night hookup.”
Her mouth quirked, and she shook her head.
Roméo set their drinks down and Wes handed him a twenty. He picked up the shots and offered one to Rubi. Then lifted his high. “To…?”
“Friends,” Rubi said with a purposeful look in her eye.
“With benefits.” Wes clinked their glasses and tilted his head back, downing the mixture of Jägermeister and Red Bull.
When Rubi finished hers, Wes took her hand as the sassy, feisty beat of “Die Young” by Kesha pumped through the club. “Let’s take the idea for a test drive. Dance with me.”
On the floor, they fell into an instant rhythm. He loved dancing with Rubi. She was smooth and hip and daring. They were always so in sync, playing off each other, making it fun and sexy. And Wes couldn’t get enough of watching her body move.
When “Die Young” transitioned into Rihanna’s upbeat “Where Have You Been,” Rubi was laughing at Wes’s improvised—and overdramatized—hip-hop moves. He loved making her laugh.
He was warm and loose when he took her hands and eased their bodies closer, lifting their arms overhead. The music pulsed through his blood. The Jäger tingled in his limbs. He felt relaxed and free, and with Rubi’s body rocking to the rhythm alongside his, Wes was high on life.
He stepped back, released one of her hands, and turned her under his arm. With a small nudge to her shoulder, she twirled away from him, and when she circled back, Wes caught her with her spine to his chest. He held her there, his arms tight around her waist, her ass fitted to his cock, and swayed, rubbing against her.
She laid her head to his shoulder and met his grind. The return of pressure, that succulent ass cradling his erection, shot his blood into a rolling boil. Wes dropped his mouth to her neck. A hum of pleasure vibrated in her throat, and one arm came up to circle his head.
Wes was floating. Everything was so perfectly in sync—the music, their bodies, their desire.
He released her hands and slid his own down her arms, skimming her breasts on the way past. Holding her waist, he soaked in every sexy movement of her body before continuing down to grip her hips. With their bodies fitted, he started a deliberate, erotic grind. In Wes’s mind, he had her alone, naked, bent over a bed.
She had to be feeling the Jäger too. She didn’t resist, didn’t pull away. She was loose, her body meeting his thrusts and rolls with her own sensual flair. They’d seriously tear up the sheets together. She had to feel that, too. Wes lowered his mouth to her cheek, her neck, her shoulder, licking and sucking every inch of exposed skin. He smoothed his hands up her ribs while meeting the rock and thrust of her ass against his cock. A moan of pleasure vibrated in her throat.
His brain was gone. His common sense, dust. She was the hottest, most exciting, and sexually uninhibited woman he’d ever known. Rubi’s sexual confidence allowed his own to flow without restriction, and he knew for a fact this was something he’d been missing in past relationships.
He slid one hand down the middle of her belly, pressed the other to her face until she turned her head and met his eyes. Hers were heavy and hot. Needy. Knowing that heat was for him pushed his heart beat higher, and he lower his hand until his palm rested on her mound, then stretched his fingers to cover her. She was small and tight and hot. A knot of lust tightened between his legs.
“Oh God.” Her eyes closed and her lips parted in a look of pleasure so rich, even more blood traveled south, filling his cock until he was painfully hard.
He covered her mouth with his, slid his tongue over hers, circling slowly as he matched the movement with his hand.
“Ah…” she gasped, the sound part surprise, part ecstasy. That sound women made just before they came. “Wes…”
He pulled his hand back, and pressed his temple to hers. “Easy, baby. I’m not ready for this to end.”
“Where Have You Been” melted into the slower, steady beat of “Glad You Came.” Wes couldn’t have choreographed the music more perfectly to his purpose. And as The Wanted sang about here and now, Wes focused on just that—these perfect moments with Rubi.
He took her hand and pulled gently, turning her to face him. She stepped in, eased her body against his, and gazed into his eyes with an I-want-you-to-fuck-me-hard look of hunger. “You’re good with your hands, Lawson.”
A grin turned his mouth, but desire immediately wiped it away. “It only gets better.” He slid one hand over her ass, paused to squeeze before traveling down the back of her smooth, tight thigh and lifted her leg to his hip. With his other hand supporting her, he dipped her slowly. Kissing her neck and moving south until his mouth was on the skin exposed in the open cleavage. He tugged the fabric from one barely covered nipple with his teeth and sucked it into his mouth. When her chest vibrated with a groan of pleasure, he closed his teeth gently around the peak and added pressure until her fingernails dug into his biceps.
With another tug of fabric, he covered her breast and pulled her out of the dip. Her gaze was a little shocked, but heavy with desire.
“All part of your benefits,” he said close to her ear.
He moved his hand along her body to the other breast, and paused to squeeze and tease. Scanning the floor, Wes found everyone lost in their own worlds, many as hotly involved in each other as he and Rubi.
When he kissed her again, her mouth was open, hot and giving. The feel of her desire snapped a fuse on his brain. Made him deliriously reckless. He eased his hand between their bodies and over her sex.
They groaned at the same time, and Rubi’s mouth grew more demanding, as if she were telling him what she wanted him to do with his hand. Keeping a rhythm on the dance floor while kissing and feeling someone up was harder than he’d thought. Especially when Rubi had blown his circuits. His mind seemed to split, his thoughts flipping between the two—dance, fuck. Dance, fuck. It took a deliberate effort to focus on the music and keep his movements synced. Every brain cell strained toward touching Rubi. Toward pleasuring her. Toward proving she would want for nothing if she gave him a chance.
He kept his body close to hers to cover their activities and pushed his hand deeper between her legs. Heat swallowed his fingers. She was soft and hot beneath the silk. Smooth. Deliciously curved.
He teased her, tracing her lips and folds. His fingertips stroked the dampness over her opening, and he groaned against her neck. “Fuck, baby. You’re burning. And so wet.”
“Wes…” Her whisper was needy, insistent, and she pushed her hips into his hand.
Wes had to grit his teeth not to forge ahead and make her come. He wanted her to remember how badly she’d needed his touch. The combination of throbbing music, pulsing darkness, writhing crowd, and growing sexual frenzy between them created a strange sense of privacy. With a little more alcohol in his system, he could see how easily he could fuck her right here, right now, on this public dance floor.
The woman made him feel almost invincible.
He slid his mouth from her lips to her cheek, her jaw. “God, I want to suck you,” he murmured, keeping his fingers light over her pussy. “I want to lick you. I want to eat you. I want to fuck you with my tongue. So good. It would be so good.”
Her hands fisted in his shirt and she groaned, the sound dripping with need.
He stepped away to turn her in his arms and pull her back against him again. Once she’d settled into their grind, Wes slid one hand from her waist to her hip, between their bodies to her ass. She lifted an arm back and around his neck, pulling his head down to her open mouth.
