Bare Pleasures Read online

  “Maybe,” Noelle said, just to be contrary.

  She wanted very badly to see him again. But this man, another chance to see him, sounded like a miraculous thing that she should not, could not, have.

  “I had a great time,” he said. “And I suspect you did too.” His smile was pure confidence as he took out his phone. “Let me get your number in case you want a repeat performance.”

  No. Beautiful days and beautiful men like this never happened to her once, much less twice.

  Noelle was about to dismiss Lex and tell him not to worry about exchanging numbers. But when she opened her mouth to tell him she’d see him around, her number fell out instead. He quickly tapped it into his phone. A few seconds later, her cell vibrated once in her purse. He’d just sent her a text.

  “Drive safe,” she said. “Don’t get too distracted looking up at the sky.”

  “The one natural beauty to distract me tonight is about to drive away in her little red Honda,” he said. “I’m good.” Then he lightly touched her arm. “See you soon.”

  She was both surprised and disappointed when he didn’t angle in for a kiss. Instead, he slowly backed away until a foot of space separated them, then two...

  “Okay. See you.” Noelle waved, feeling awkward, as if they hadn’t spent nearly eight perfect hours together.

  She got into her car and pulled out her phone to see what Lex said in his text. A fireworks icon. She smiled. When she looked up, his car was still there, waiting with the windows down. He was a sinfully beautiful silhouette in the driver’s seat, watching her, not fiddling with a phone like she’d been doing. The lights of his car flashed. “I’m not leaving until you do,” he called out.

  She put her phone down and started her car. Her phone vibrated again.

  You should lock your car door if you’re going to sit in a dark parking lot. I’d feel guilty if you got kidnapped.

  “I’m going!” she yelled out the window.

  His smile flashed at her in approval as she pulled out of the parking lot, making sure to pass within a few feet of his big, black car. He was almost as bad as Margot when it came to her safety. The thought passed through her mind, a fleeting thing, as she drove toward her house. Despite her innate pessimism, she indulged in memories of their near-perfect day. His smiles, the way he looked wading out of the water toward her, the imagined warmth of his mouth on hers. Noelle fully expected him to follow her down into her dreams and stir her mercilessly with desire while she slept.

  That night, though, she dreamed about Eric instead of Lex.

  * * *

  The wedding was perfect. Sunshine blessed the very grass under Noelle’s feet as she walked across the gleaming green lawn toward the altar where Eric waited with the priest, his back to her. She recognized the long and elegant rod of his back, the way the suit fit every lean line of him. And she was happy. But part of her remembered that he’d left her, that he didn’t love her, and screamed for her to stop walking. But the grass kept moving under her delicate white flats, the tulle of her dress floated around her and the salty breeze off the water smelled like paradise. Her dream self felt content. Noelle recognized that joyful feeling as something far away from her real self but strong and undeniable in the heart of the girl who walked in the dream.

  Turn around. Go back. He doesn’t love you. He’ll leave!

  But the dream Noelle walked on. Blissful and oblivious. Only a few feet away from him, she paused to take in a deep and ecstatic breath, savoring the beauty of the moment, the sun on her skin, her fiancé being right where he promised he’d be. Her chest was full to bursting with contentment.

  Then she started forward again, gliding across the grass, the hem of her dress gathered in her hands so she would not fall. As she drew closer, though, she realized that with every step Eric’s body became more and more transparent, slowly disappearing before her eyes. She started walking faster. She could see the priest through his body. She reached out to him. Called his name. But he didn’t turn around. Her foot touched the grass next to his and she reached out just as he disappeared like he’d never even been there.

  Noelle woke up crying.

  Chapter 7

  Lex felt like the worst kind of bastard.

  The wind brushed his face as he drove with all the windows down, the stereo blasting Kid Cudi. The night was too beautiful for what he had done. Noelle. Opening up to him like a flower long hidden in shadow, her reluctant laughter, the way her skin begged him to touch even as her mouth told him not to. Lex wanted to seduce and be seduced by her. He wanted to pull her down into the sand and kiss her under the blast of fireworks until neither of them knew whether the explosions were up in the sky or between them. None of that had anything to do with Margot. Yet it had everything to do with her.

  When did his desire to shield himself and his parents from the truth of what he’d done turn into the necessity of hurting someone else? Because, make no mistake, someone was going to get hurt. Not just someone. Noelle. Because even though he could lie to himself all night long and say this was just a game they could all laugh about later, the honest part of him saw the wreck that would eventually happen. Noelle would be the one left hurting, and she would never forgive him.

  Dammit.

  He growled out his frustration. Banged his fist on the steering wheel. The Charger swerved and the car next to him honked sharply. He nearly overcorrected the car into a ditch.

  Now he was just being stupid. Lex tapped the phone icon on his steering wheel.

  “I’m coming over,” he said when Adisa answered.

  She paused. “How long?”

  He glanced at the car’s dashboard clock. “About fifteen, maybe twenty.”

  “Okay. I’ll break out the scotch.”

  It took him fifteen minutes to make it to his sister’s doorstep. He let himself into her house with his key and called out her name as he walked through the darkened living room of her ranch-style Coral Gables house.

  “I’m out back!”

  Except for the lights in the pool, it was dark in her backyard. But he could clearly see Adisa sitting in one of the chairs near the pool, a yellow robe draped over her already wet bikini. A pair of wineglasses, only one of them empty, sat on the edge of the pool. Lex almost felt guilty.

  “Did I interrupt something?” He asked out of politeness’s sake, knowing that if he had someone over and his sister called to say she needed him, he would have asked them to leave too.

  “Nothing that can’t be postponed.”

  Adisa gave him a glass of his favorite scotch, a true indulgence at more than a thousand dollars a bottle and something she kept on hand because he liked it. He rolled up his pants, sat down and put his feet in the pool. The scotch was smooth going down, a slow and deep warmth worth every single one of its fourteen years.

  Adisa already had her own glass. She balanced it on the edge of the pool before slipping off her robe and getting into the water. Her movement provoked ripples in every direction, the lights under the water bright on her white bikini and long legs. She held the glass of scotch above the water as she made her way close to Lex in the shallow end, snagged a passing floaty chair and rested her drink in its cup holder.

  “What’s got you so glum?” she asked.

  He waved his feet back and forth in the water. “I’m not glum, just regretting a few decisions right now.”

  “You mean that tattoo you got when you were eighteen?” The ice in her glass rattled as she took a sip of the scotch. “I told you that was a crap idea. Only serial killers get dragons tattooed across their entire backs.”

  He didn’t even have a token smile for her at the old joke. The tattoo was something he’d gotten the night before being shipped off to Jamaica. She’d gotten a smaller one in solidarity.

  “I messed up,” he said.


  She rolled her eyes. “What’s her name?”

  He stopped moving his feet. “What are you talking about? I didn’t say anything about a woman.”

  “Yeah. But you’re doing great at work. Mama and Daddy still love you despite everything, and you didn’t call me from jail, so it must be a chick. Simple deduction. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  God... Sometimes he hated that she knew him so well.

  “It’s not really a...” He stopped the lie before it properly started. “Remember that woman I worked for when I was in Jamaica?”

  “As if I could forget. It’s not every day my brother gets talked out of becoming a high-class hooker for bored society bitc—”

  He cut her off. “She’s here in Miami.”

  Adisa made a point to finish her sentence and then she frowned as she seemed to rewind his statement in her mind. “Is the world that small?”

  “Looks like it. She was at Lola’s opening the other day.” He took another sip of the scotch and told her what happened after he saw Margot at the gallery.

  “Is she blackmailing you?” Adisa’s look sharpened and, despite her bikini and pretty face, she resembled nothing less than a shark in that moment. “Because if she is, I can take care of that real quick.”

  Sometimes he worried his sister was more dangerous than she ought to be for a woman raised in silk socks and private schools.

  “It’s not blackmail. I owe her. You know I do.”

  “Do you? I think simple logic would’ve brought you around eventually.”

  Lex didn’t stop the smile that quickly claimed his mouth. Despite everything he’d done, Adisa’s faith in him was unshakable. But he wasn’t blinded by love like she was. As a kid, he’d been bent on self-destruction. The idea of jail didn’t scare him. Threats were like dares to him. His family’s pleas had fallen on deliberately closed ears.

  Then Margot happened. The combination of her ruthless beauty and polished veneer of power had caught Lex’s attention like nothing else. She didn’t threaten him, she didn’t beg him. She just told him how it was. Promised him that if he started tricking out of her club, she would ruin him at school. That was when he started to listen and they began to be something like friends. Lex owed her a lot.

  “Before she came along, it never occurred to me to just...chill and not be so hell-bent on hurting our parents,” he said. “If she hadn’t talked to me, I would’ve probably done something real dumb like sell Diallo propriety formulas or something.”

  “Even back then you weren’t that stupid.” She tapped the corner of her glass with a long, purple fingernail. “So, are you going to keep seeing this girl and pretending you like her?”

  “That’s just the thing, I do like her.”

  Adisa gave him a look she must’ve learned from their mother. “I hope you know this isn’t going to end well.”

  “Who you tellin’?” He put his nearly empty glass on the edge of the pool and leaned back with his palms flat against the concrete behind him. “Noelle is nothing like Margot thinks she is. I’m not even sure she’s that broken up about the wedding being called off.”

  “Did she tell you that?”

  “No. Just a feeling.” He moved his feet in the pool, enjoying the drag of the water on his ankles. “Even that day I saw her at the gallery...”

  Lex remembered well the heat building in his body, rising from his thighs, up to his crotch and into his chest. Just at the sight of her. He’d been so lost in his admiration of her body that he was caught off guard when he saw her looking back at him with the same intensity he was sure was in his face. But, in the end, the promise of celibacy he’d made to himself was the reason he hadn’t walked across that room and claimed what they both wanted.

  He winced as water splashed in his face. Adisa hovered near him, her hand getting ready to splash more water his way.

  “Are you going to spontaneously combust over this woman?” she asked with real concern. “I’d prefer you get out of my pool if that’s going to happen.”

  “Don’t be nasty,” Lex said, getting up to take off his pants and shirt.

  He dove into the pool in his underwear, splashing his sister as he went in. Although it was about eighty degrees outside, his sister kept the pool heated. Lex glided under the surface and blew a steady stream of bubbles, swam in front of Adisa, who dipped down to join him, smiling with all her teeth. They circled around each other, holding their breath until Lex felt that panicked feeling of running out of air. But still, he tried to hold out and outlast Adisa. But he couldn’t. He burst to the surface with a gasp, spraying water everywhere. His sister shot up a few seconds later, crowing in triumph.

  “Good try, big brother!”

  He splashed her and swam away. “I almost won this time.”

  “Keep practicing.”

  Lex swam the length of the pool to the soundtrack of Adisa’s laughter. Countless laps later, he collapsed on the deck chair and stretched out to stare at the stars. Adisa dropped down next to him, fumbling for her robe and the bottle of scotch.

  “It’s getting late. I should go.”

  “You should stay,” she said.

  Lex turned his head to look at her, starfished on the chair next to his, slowly drinking a fresh glass of scotch and watching him in return. “What am I doing?”

  “You didn’t come here for advice. You already made up your mind about what to do. I’m not going to waste my breath.” Adisa sipped her scotch. “Just be careful, okay?”

  “What kind of trouble could I possibly get into? It’s not like Margot is the mob or something.”

  “I can see your trouble coming from a mile away, Alexander. You do too. You’re just in denial.”

  He looked away from her face and its annoying look of I’m right. The most sensible thing for him to do was drink more scotch and not think about any of it. So that was what he did.

  Chapter 8

  “You look like crap.”

  “Thanks, Margot.” Noelle stepped down the last step and into the belly of the yacht and dropped her purse on the low coffee table. Before she left home, she thought she’d looked decent enough in the white minidress and strappy sandals, even if she did have dark circles under her eyes from her sleepless night. Apparently makeup didn’t hide as much as she thought.

  “If I didn’t feel like crap before...” She sat next to her sister and peered over her shoulder through the porthole. Biscayne Bay stretched out, blue and glimmering, beneath the Miami skyline and a jet ski powered past with a steady growl, splashing up water in its wake. The sound of laughter and the clink of glass on glass, a martini shaker at work, loud chatter, came from a room nearby.

  Margot dropped a hand on her bare arm. “Are you okay?” Even concerned as Noelle knew she was, her sister sounded cold. But that was simply how she was.

  “Yeah,” she said with a tired sigh. “I just didn’t sleep well last night.”

  After the dream about Eric, that had been it for her sleep. Instead of staying in bed, she sat on her back porch drinking herbal tea and watching the sun come up. Somehow, with the tea warming her hands, she’d thought about Lex and his offer for her to come over to his place and share a pot of something exotic. It was a euphemism. It had to be. If they’d actually sat in the masculine place where he lived and slept, she wouldn’t have been satisfied with just the warm and sweet flavor of the tea in her mouth.

  Noelle refocused her attention on Margot just as a look stole across her sister’s face, something she was too slow to catch.

  “Why didn’t you sleep well?” Margot leaned back on the leather bench seat and crossed her legs in the white linen pants, flashing the elegant curves of the matching Louboutin heels. “I thought you had a great date last night.”

  Noelle had made the mistake of telling Margot abou
t her impromptu date with Lex. Over the phone, her sister had been surprised and then strangely happy for her, saying she was glad for Noelle’s new distraction.

  “It wasn’t really a date,” Noelle said. “I told you that on the phone.”

  Margot shrugged. “A hot guy picks you up at a café and spends the rest of the day with you. I count that as a date.”

  She narrowed her eyes at her sister. Since when did Margot approve of any man she ever dated—or even met at a tea shop—without running a thorough background check first? Did Noelle look so desperate she was willing to sacrifice her to some random stranger?

  “He could have been a serial killer for all you know,” Noelle said. “An arsonist. A meth head.”

  “You watch too much TV,” Margot said. “Just because you live in Miami doesn’t mean you’ll run into a Dexter at every turn in the road.”

  “It doesn’t mean I won’t. Isn’t Miami the murder capital of the United States?”

  “Technically that’s Flint, Michigan,” Margot murmured with an inward look like she was consulting a mental database. “Or Chicago if you just look at the actual number of murders instead of population percentage.”

  Noelle didn’t ask Margot how she knew that. She took off her shades and anchored them in her hair. The floor shuddered under her feet as the boat pulled away from the dock and deeper into Biscayne Bay.

  The yacht party was another one of Margot’s ideas, something else to get Noelle out of the house. She hadn’t told her sister yet about her dance classes and the people she’d met there, how much better she was feeling about life in general. It would only give her sister another set of people to run security and background checks on. As if anyone who came into Noelle’s life was applying for a job and would only pass the test if Margot thought they were worthy.

  That was the way of things since their parents died. Noelle hated it. That was the reason she’d had few friends who stayed in her life. Margot investigated them, told Noelle every indecent and awful thing about them until she couldn’t look them in the face anymore without seeing their mistakes.