Breaking All Her Rules

Chapter Three

Zack stepped out of the shower and ran a towel over his chest, then down lower, before wrapping it around his hips and walking out into the living area of the hotel room.

He thought it was a little bit stupid that the studio was putting him up in a place like this, considering he was trying to raise money for a charity. But if everything went well, the proceeds would go above and beyond his hotel-room bill.

“The bar tab is another story,” he said out loud.

No. He didn’t drink like that anymore. Rock bottom had been a few years back.

Still, he eyed the minibar with no small amount of interest. Then his thoughts shot back to his shared cab ride.

Grace Song.

Hell, he hadn’t flirted like that in more than a decade. It had been...well, it had been great. She’d been so damn pretty. So uptight. And he’d wanted to uncoil all that glossy black hair and see just how long it was. How it would feel sifting through his fingers.

That was a Grade-A fantasy considering he’d been too burned out to have one in the past six years. Mainly he’d just let porn supply the visual while his right hand took it from there.

Which was kind of empty and hollow, really. But hey, he had to get off sometimes, and he genuinely lacked the energy to do it another way.

Though tonight, he could easily imagine which image he might...

He cleared his throat. Slightly creepy. That was slightly creepy. But if no one knew...

He pressed his hand against the front of his towel, against his hardening member. Who the hell cared if it was creepy?

His phone rang, the sharp sound making him jump as pulled his hand away from his dick like a guilty thirteen-year-old.

He walked over the phone and swore. If it was Marsha again he was going to growl at her. Because he’d left his phone sitting in the other room on the bed for a reason. He didn’t want to deal with people until he absolutely had to.

He didn’t want to go “take in a show” or have sushi, or get a manicure or whatever the hell else Marsha might think he needed to do to fully enjoy his time in New York. He would deal with that crap when he had to. Tonight, all he wanted to do was stay in his room, order dinner in and jack off. It didn’t seem like a major ask.

He picked up the handset.

“Hello,” he said, growling already.

“Yes, Mr. Camden. There’s a visitor here for you. Grace Song. She’d like permission to come up.”

It was as if all of his penis’s hopes and dreams had come true.

Down, boy, she’s not here for that.

Well, why the hell else would she be here? Unless she was looking for Fox in the City Part Deux after she’d discovered his identity.

Maybe she’d used Google to find him. Though, he had no idea why she would. He was some random guy she’d shared a cab with, who’d done a rather terrible sketch on a card for her.

“Yeah,” Zack said. “Send her up.” He paused.

He looked down at where his hand still gripped the towel. Well, that would have to be taken care of.

He dropped it and left a pool of snow-white terry cloth on the floor before going back into his bedroom and opening up his suitcase.

He ought to get his suit out. If it was wrinkled Marsha would probably have his ass on a platter. Apparently “hobo chic” as she had once called it, was not a thing.

He tugged out a pair of jeans and shrugged them on, pulling them up and stuffing all relevant parts down in there carefully before doing the zipper with even more care. He did not need a zipper incident.

That would be the ultimate irony. He finally got his penis to sit up and pay attention. If he immediately mortally wounded it with a zipper he would just have to tell life to go screw itself.

He heard a light knock on the door and he went out into the living area. He walked to the door and opened it. It really was her. All five-foot-nothing of her. Dark hair still pulled back in that little bun pinned primly at the nape of her neck. Her cheeks a pale pink, a streak of blush paint over porcelain skin. Her almond-shaped eyes were deep brown, nearly black, framed with lush dark lashes.

She was perfection. And he hadn’t even gotten to her figure, which, though petite, packed the kind of punch that...well, that had made him lust again.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked.

She looked him over, from his face down to his bare chest, to his jeans, which were barely hanging onto his hips, and the color in her cheeks deepened.

“Your phone,” she said, holding a delicate hand out.

“What?”

“This is your phone,” she said.

“Come in.” She looked to the left, then the right. “What, are you afraid entering my hotel room is felony or something?”

“I don’t know you,” she said.

“We shared a cab.”

“An act I don’t even commit with the closest of acquaintances. I guess I don’t have to worry about you kidnapping me and making a pair of underwear out of my hair.”

“That is completely disgusting. Also, something Pato might do.”

“Pato?”

“He’s a...modern artist.”

She raised her brows. “Okay.”

“Coming in?”

“Sure,” she said, stepping grandly over the threshold. “Now where is my phone?”

“It’s on my bed. I haven’t touched it since I got out of the cab. I’m not in the mood to deal with...well, anything. And I can order fried chicken and pornography from the comfort of my own bed so...”

“Charming.”

“I’m not trying to be,” he said. Except he sort of wished he could be. So that he could...seduce her, maybe. But he was pretty sure he’d forgotten how to seduce a woman.

Like schmoozing at gallery openings, maybe?

Well, that he could do. For very short periods of time. Because Marsha had threatened to get a shock collar for him if he didn’t learn to mind his manners.

“Clearly. Phone?”

“On my bed.” He started walking back toward the bedroom, then stopped. “How did you know where I was staying?”

“I tracked my phone.”

“Damn, you can do that with these?”

“It’s an app. It’s really simple. I can...show you or...or not. I have to...I don’t have anywhere to be.”

“Why is that?” he asked, crossing his arms across his chest.

“Because my boss the...jerk...relieved me of the only client I had left in the day after tearing me a new one because of a client complaining about me. Never mind said client was only complaining because I did not flutter my lashes at him when he made it clear he wanted to get into my pencil skirt.”

“What?”

“The client I was meeting with, right before I got in the cab. He made a pass at me, I politely rebuffed him. He called my boss because I am, apparently, cold and unfriendly. My boss doesn’t care about my side of things. He only cares that I pissed off a client and I am now being punished for not offering a side of sex with my financial advice.”

“He can’t do that,” Zack said. “Your boss.”

“Sure he can, because it’s the client’s word against mine. Because all he has to know is that I dissatisfied a client and the what and why don’t matter.”

“Did you tell him that the guy was being a douche?”

She bit her lip. “Not as such.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means no.”

“Well, why the hell not?”

“Because!” she said. “It’s hard to be a woman in this business. And people treat you like...like you’re there for them, and if you dare complain you’re humorless and mean. And if you call them on their crap you’re shrill. And if you say someone hit on you and it creeped you out they say you’re imagining things, and making mountains out of molehills and I’ve watched, for the past eight years, people being driven out of the more high-profile offices, because it gets to be too much. So I just figured if I worked harder, if I did the right things, I would be rewarded for it, but now I’m in trouble because some guy...I just...it’s not supposed to be like this.”

“No. It’s not,” he said. And all this made him feel like an ass because he’d been about to...thinking about her. And she’d been objectified enough today.

Naturally, he couldn’t just have a simple fantasy. No. That would have been too damn kind of life. Life just didn’t do kind for him.

Kind of a funny thought, up in a suite that overlooked Central Park, but hey, there were more important things in life than a room with a view.

He’d rather go back to living poor, on a ranch in Pine Ridge Falls, with the people he loved most, than be here alone. But that was another lifetime. Another man. He wasn’t even going to think about it.

“Then why is it?” she asked.

“Hell if I know. Life never seems to be the way it’s supposed to be,” he said. “All you can do is enjoy the little things. Which is why I was thinking porn and chicken.”

“I have no little things I enjoy,” she said. “I enjoy nothing. And I think I hate everything.” She was breathing hard, her eyes wide.

“Everything?”

“I don’t even have a life. I don’t even think I have any friends left. I work at this job, and I go back to my apartment and order takeout and I watch DVR’d TV shows. I don’t date I don’t...I don’t...” Her eyes clashed with his, a hard sock of heat hitting his gut.

“What else?” he asked.

She looked away. “If I don’t date I think it’s pretty obvious what else I’m not doing.”

Oh, yes, he was well familiar with that problem. He hadn’t gotten laid in so long he was afraid his long uprooted virginity was starting to grow back. If such a thing was possible. He hadn’t seen sex since his twenties, and sitting where he was at thirty-five that seemed damn sad.

He’d had a lot more than getting some on his mind, though, but now...now it seemed like maybe he needed to do something about it. Maybe it was time to let another person touch him. Not a handshake or anything, but hands on naked skin. On skin that was normally covered by clothes.

He hadn’t been tempted to connect in so long. He’d been avoiding it. He’d been too raw. But everything had scarred over now. Had come out tougher than he’d started. It would never heal, but he wasn’t vulnerable anymore. He doubted he possessed the ability to be hurt at this point, to feel loss.

He’d maxed out that garbage a while ago.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice rough. Affected. “Obvious.”

“I guess maybe not because some people just...I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with you. You officially know more of my baggage than my best friend, who I haven’t talked to in four months because I’m an unhappy, terrible workaholic, and she’s just as bad.”

“Well, you’re in my hotel room, I’m half-dressed.... It seems logical really.”

“My phone?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah.” That was why she was here. Her phone. The one on his bed. He’d completely forgotten. It hadn’t seemed to matter.

“Yeah,” she said, her eyes wide. “I kind of forgot. About my phone. Which I never do, because I’m addicted to using my phone. How sad is that? I am addicted to my phone. To keeping plugged into my office when I’m not there. Sometimes I get so caught up in work email during dinner that I forget to pay attention to the show on my DVR. So I record shows, because I’m too busy to watch them when they come on, then I put them on and I ignore them! I am a mess.”

“You really are.”

“I need to relax.”

“I agree.”

“Do you know what I need?” she asked, her small breasts rising and falling with the sharp pitch of her breathing.

“What?” he asked, his stomach tightening.

“I just need to relax.”

“I agree.”

“I need...” Her eyes had dropped back down to his chest. “I need to...make a decision instead of just flying under the radar. I think I need to cut loose.” Her eyes met his again. “Got any ideas?”

“I do. But I’m a stranger and I’m pretty sure none of the ideas I have are appropriate for strangers.”

“We shared a cab,” she said, a desperate light in her dark gaze now.

“Well, then, I guess that changes things. Kiss me.”

Chapter Four

Grace thought she might pass out. All of the blood drained out of her head and pooled in her feet, her lips cold, her brain fuzzy.

Her skin was chilled, but inside she was burning up.

She didn’t know what she was doing. She’d led the conversation here, that was undeniable. She’d been baiting him. Baiting this sexy stranger so that she could see just what he might do. So that she could...what, exactly, she didn’t know.

Well, now it had culminated in a request—no, a demand—for a kiss.

His eyes were burning, golden fire, and she could feel it streaking through her.

She didn’t kiss strangers. Ever.

Especially not shirtless strangers in hotel rooms that were probably more than her month’s rent for one night. Especially not big rough, cowboy-type strangers. Who drew foxes and swore and took her phone and freely confessed to the desire to order porn.

Neither of her exes would have ever admitted to such male crassness.

Likely they engaged in it, but they never would have confessed it.

Though, maybe Zack wouldn’t have confessed if she wasn’t a stranger. Maybe he was feeling freer, too.

Maybe this would be good for both of them.

Sliding down the slippery slope, Grace?

She wanted to punch inner Grace in her smug perfect face. Except, inner Grace had a point. Inner Grace was thinking of Hannah. Of the bad sister. The one who had gone off the rails, into parties and drugs and now, to the point where no one had a clue where she was.

Hannah, the daughter who made her mother cry, and her father sit in a dark room and just stare ahead sadly, at nothing.

The daughter Grace had spent her teenage and adult years trying to make up for.

But no one has to know about this. No one would ever know.

She was fighting against this strange, icy feeling inside of her. The one that had kept her mouth frozen shut and her words carefully chosen while her boss had effectively ripped her a new one. The one that always checked with her parents before she made major decisions, to ensure that her decisions were good ones.

The one that kept her head down and worked hard, her entire life a big demonstration of just how good she was so that no one would ever question it.

And after that showdown in her boss’s office, she was tired of that. Tired of trying to be the Grace everyone else wanted to see. The problem was she didn’t know how to be anything else.

But no one was here to question this. Zack was a stranger. He didn’t know anyone at work. He didn’t know her parents. He didn’t know her.

This room was out of time, this man out of context with everything else in her life.

Why not? Why not do this. Why not take this.

No one will ever know....

“One kiss,” she said. And even as she said it, she knew it wouldn’t stop at that.

But she was tired of being frozen in indecision. Tired of being scared to act.

So now she was acting. Just for now. Just for her.

“Sure,” he said, arching a brow and moving toward her.

He hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her up against him, pinning her arms, his chest hard and hot against her wrists. “If you want to stop at one,” he said, his breath fanning across her cheek.

He smelled good. Like skin and soap. No cologne or any other artificial scent. Just man. And she’d never really appreciated the smell of a man before.

“Well, we haven’t even gotten to the one yet. You’re counting your chickens before they’re hatched.”

“Am I still the fox in this scenario? Are the chickens in the same henhouse?”

“I don’t know. Shut up and kiss me.”

He did. His lips were hard on hers, taking, not asking. And there was nothing about that she should find hot. She wasn’t in to being taken. She wasn’t in to brute strength and big hands. Traditionally speaking. Right now his brute strength and big hands were really doing something for her.

Like, lots of somethings.

He curved his arms around her, his palms flat on her back, pulling her in, his large frame enveloping her. He curled blunt fingers onto her skin, her mouth rough on hers, his tongue delving deep.

She arched into him, and his hand slid downward, down the dip in her spine, curving over her butt. She should be...shocked. At the very least she should be shocked. She shouldn’t be aroused. She shouldn’t want to push her hips back so that his grasp on her was even firmer. So that he was holding her harder.

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