Big Shot(3)
Of course, Natalie was the only woman in the bar he wouldn’t dare touch, no matter how much she tempted him. She was off-limits, forbidden fruit, and all that clichéd crap. But Jesus, if she wasn’t his best friend’s little sister, he would have already coaxed her into his bed, if only to get her out of his system so he wasn’t so damned fixated with what he couldn’t have. And since he wasn’t used to not getting exactly what he wanted, it only added to her appeal.
“So, we’ve been here for over an hour,” Max, the other broker in the firm, said conversationally as he leaned an arm against the bar, where they were standing at the far end, a beer bottle dangling between his fingers. “How much longer are you going to try and pretend that Natalie, who pretty much crushed you at your own game today, isn’t here, too?”
Wes chose to ignore Max’s comment about today’s defeat and feigned surprise instead. “She’s here? I had no idea.”
“I’m going to have to call bullshit on that one,” Max said with a knowing laugh. “You do realize that the civil thing for you to do would be to go over there and congratulate her on the Davenport sale today, right?”
“It was my goddamn listing,” he grumbled irritably. And he preferred not to eat any crow tonight.
“I don’t get what the problem is,” Max said, studying Wes too intently. “We still made a hefty commission on our end because it was our listing.”
“I don’t like forfeiting any of our commission to the competition.” He tossed back the last of his drink and set his glass on the countertop with a loud clack.
Max held his gaze. “She didn’t have to be our competition.”
Jesus. Refusing to have this argument for the second time today, Wes decided that playing nice with Natalie would be much safer than Max digging deeper into Wes’s true reasons for saying no to her working at Premier Realty.
“Fine. I’ll go and congratulate her.” He sounded like he wanted to do anything but that.
Max shook his head, clearly trying not to laugh at Wes’s poor sportsmanship. “Maybe you ought to have a slice of humble pie before you head over there.”
“Don’t be an *, Maximilian,” he said, using his friend’s full name, which the other man hated because it sounded too pretentious, and truthfully, Max was anything but pompous or conceited despite coming from an extremely wealthy family.
“Then don’t be a f*cking *,” he shot right back. “Seriously, Wes. You’ve known Natalie most of your life. You’re best friends with her brother. You can’t let shit like this get in the way of that friendship. For f*ck’s sake, go and congratulate her, and sound like you mean it.”
Wes hated to admit it, but Max was right. He was being ridiculous and overly reactive about the entire situation, especially when Wes reminded himself, once again, that he was the one who’d held firm on the no-mixing-business-with-family rule. Except he couldn’t shake the way their last few real estate interactions had felt as though Natalie was deliberately goading him. Maybe if he acted unaffected by it all, she’d back off and she’d stop trying to one-up him. It was certainly worth a shot.
He glanced back over to Natalie just as her two other friends were leaving the table. It appeared they were saying their good-byes, and while Heather and Chloe made their way to the entrance, Natalie remained behind, texting with someone on her cell phone. The perfect opportunity to approach Natalie presented itself while she was alone, maybe even a little more accessible, and there wasn’t an audience around to witness their conversation. Which meant no gossip between the three girls when he walked away from the table if he said or did something stupid. Which was always a possibility.
“I’ll be right back,” Wes said to Max, and after his friend lifted his beer in a silent toast of encouragement, Wes headed over to Natalie’s table. Just as he came up behind her, her phone rang and she picked it up with a cheerful, “Hi, Richard.”
Shit. Wes came to an abrupt stop and thought about quickly pivoting around before Natalie saw him so he didn’t interrupt her conversation, but she turned her head at that same moment and their gazes met, her bright blue eyes widening in surprise when she saw it was him.
“Sorry.” He mouthed the words to her, suddenly feeling awkward when moments ago he’d been so confident. “I’ll come back when you’re off the phone.”
She shook her head as she listened to whoever Richard was—a boyfriend?—talking on the other end of the line, then she pointed at the seat opposite her. “Sit down. I’ll just be a sec,” she whispered to Wes.
Not wanting to be rude—he was trying to be a nice guy, remember?—Wes slid onto the barstool across from her. As he waited for Natalie to finish her call, he couldn’t help but notice how animated she was with this Richard person, how excited her voice was as she spoke to him.
“I know, right?” she exclaimed enthusiastically, and followed that up with a softer, more modest, “Thank you,” which turned into a “Yes, we’ll definitely have to celebrate,” and “That sounds amazing . . . ”
After a minute or so, all Wes heard was blah, blah, blah as his gaze focused in on her lush mouth and the way her tongue occasionally slipped out to touch her full bottom lip—pink and soft and generous enough to cushion a man’s cock as she sucked him off. His groin tightened at the provocative image flitting through his mind, with sweet Natalie Prescott in the starring role of the gorgeous brunette on her knees in front of him, giving Wes the best f*cking head he’d ever had.