Sure Shot (Brooklyn #4)(14)

His expression softens. “That’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time.”

“You’re welcome,” I say, feeling a little more rational. A little more like myself.

But when the elevator doors open on the twentieth floor, and Tank waits for me to step out, I’m back to goosebumps and a fluttery tummy. At the end of the hallway, he pulls out a key card and swipes us into his room. Against my better judgment, I follow him inside.

The suite is spacious, with a kitchenette and a dining table. Soft lighting shows off the sleek lines of the low, leather sofas. I skirt the edge of the room, trying to keep my distance. It’s surreal to be alone with him after so many years. It’s even more surreal that I woke up this morning thinking about him.

The coincidence is easily explained by the date of my birth, and the start of hockey season, but I still feel like I’ve somehow conjured him with my thoughts.

With forced nonchalance, I stand in front of a set of floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over Brooklyn at twilight. The bridge is lit up in the distance, with the skyscrapers of Manhattan just beyond. The Empire State building is illuminated in green and blue. And a million other lights twinkle in the span between.

It’s a view that can make any girl feel small and lonely. In New York, everyone is Cinderella. There’s always a party going on somewhere that you weren’t invited to.

“Would you like a glass of red?” Tank asks me. “Isn’t that how it all began?” He stands at the kitchen counter, uncorking a bottle of wine with a confident twist of his muscled wrist.

“Sure,” I say as he pours two glasses.

I watch the burgundy liquid mold to the goblets’ shape. Then my dark prince lifts both glasses and stalks toward me at the windows. “Happy Birthday, Bess” he says, his eyes roving my face.

“Thank you.” I take a glass, and my hand only shakes a little. Our glasses touch in a silent toast, and goosebumps rise on my arms as I hold his gaze and take a sip.

“How does it feel to turn twenty-one?” he whispers.

Since I’m taking a sip, the joke catches me off guard, and I swallow too fast. “Who’s a funny guy?” I say, trying not to cough.

He gives me a smile that belongs in the bedroom scene of a Hollywood movie. In fact, everything Tank does has a sexual awareness to it. The way he walks across a room? Pure sex. The way he holds his wine glass? He might as well be cupping a breast.

I’d blame my dry spell, but I’ve always looked at him with my tongue practically hanging out. Always. I’m ashamed to say that I tore one of his underwear ads out of a magazine and pinned it to the refrigerator in my first Detroit apartment.

He ruined me for other men, I think. Maybe that’s why I’m still single.

“Serious question,” he says. “If you could snap your fingers and rewind nine years, would you like to be twenty-one again?”

“I don’t know.” Not that I’m thinking clearly right now. “There are things I’d like to change about my life. But I’ve been lucky, you know? It would be a crime to complain.”

“Would it?” he asks softly.

“Absolutely.” I take another sip of wine and then set the glass down on a nearby table, so that I don’t guzzle it.

Tank sets his glass beside mine, and the moment crackles with tension.

When I gather my courage and raise my eyes, he’s studying me. Slowly, he lifts a hand, threading it into my hair, catching the back of my head, and angling my face to look up at his handsome one.

Another man might say something self-deprecating to break the tension. But not Tank. He regards me with a gaze that’s full of expectation. It doesn’t ask permission. He simply dips his head, until his mouth finds the juncture of my neck and shoulder. Then he tastes my skin with firm lips and a sultry tongue.

At the contact, my body flashes first with chills, and then with heat. This ought to seem incredibly weird. We’ve had two minutes of conversation and barely a sip of wine, and now he’s sucking on my neck. But Tank has always occupied an alternative reality—a foreign place where intimate touch is the native language of the land.

I’d forgotten this place existed, but it’s good to be back. As he draws me closer, kissing his way up my neck, the scent of his shaving soap washes over me. And my body remembers what to do. Leaning closer, I grip his polo shirt so that he can’t get away before I can take another whiff.

“Take it off,” he says between worshipful kisses.

“What?” I gasp, because my executive function is starting to evaporate under the heat of his mouth.

“My shirt,” he grunts. “Take it off. I need your hands on my body.”

In the ordinary world, nobody gives me orders. I’ve arranged my entire life around my independence. But here in Tank’s world, up is down and down is up. Before he even finishes speaking, I’m unbuttoning his polo shirt and lifting it off.

“That’s a girl,” he whispers, and the praise makes my heart beat faster. And now Tank’s chest and I are reacquainted. My hands slide over the ridges of his abs, and I’m just settling in to explore further when he cups my chin and takes my mouth in a kiss.

I go still with surprise. After all, it’s been nine years since anyone kissed me with such easy arrogance. It was just the same on that fateful night when I turned twenty-one. His first kiss stunned me with its boldness.