From This Moment On (The Sullivans #2)(4)

At least if she’d ever had anything approaching real pleasure, maybe she wouldn’t be so bitter about her reputation. Maybe then she could just own it. Maybe then she would actually feel like the sexy woman she portrayed on her album covers and music videos. Maybe then she wouldn’t have made her choreographer, Lori, stay so long with her tonight, long past when she should have let the woman leave for her brother’s engagement party.

All of a sudden, a crazy impulse hit her square in her solar plexus: since she was never going to shake off her reputation, what if she went out to earn it instead?

Nicola had always been impulsive, from the time she was a little girl. Her report cards said the same thing, year after year: “Nicola is a bright girl, but she often acts without thinking.”

Okay, she thought as she tossed various articles of clothing onto the bed and tried to figure out just the right look for what she wanted to accomplish tonight, so she’d learned her lesson about trusting jerks. And, of course, one day she wanted love. Real love. True love.

But she was tired of living like a nun, sick of trying to constantly convince everyone that she wasn’t a wild party girl, when they all thought she was anyway.

For just one night she wanted to know what all the fuss was about. She wanted to find a man to share her passions with, a real man who was experienced enough to take her to a place she’d never been before.

Her heart beat hard as she stripped off her sweatpants and tank top and slipped into a short, strapless leather dress. One wrong move in any direction and the T&A she was so famous for would be popping out for the entire world to see.

But, suddenly, Nicola didn’t care anymore. Anything was better than this bone-deep loneliness.

So she’d end up on the cover of another tabloid magazine. Big whoop. It wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before. And she’d survived.

Mostly, anyway.

Chapter Two

Marcus was known for his patience. After helping to raise his seven siblings, he’d learned to wait out tantrums, fistfights, even tears.

Tonight, he was all out of patience.

He’d been watching the dancers for long enough to know that he wasn’t going to take a single one of them to bed. None of the women who’d walked in through the thick red curtain in the past thirty minutes had been contenders, either.

Until, suddenly, the curtain parted…and she walked in.

Marcus felt like a fist had slammed straight into his gut.

The woman was young, mid-twenties probably, and so damn beautiful it almost hurt to look at her. Her black leather dress left nothing to his imagination, fitting her like a second skin with wide cut-outs that ran down the side of her insane curves.

She was the one.

As she stood in the doorway and slowly scanned the crowd, every eye in the room was on her. She was magnetic, had that special something that made it impossible to pull your eyes away from her.

And then her eyes met his, illuminated by a beam of light in the dark room, and although Marcus hadn’t drunk nearly enough at Chase’s engagement party to be unsteady on his feet, one look at those clear blue eyes had him fighting for balance.

What was wrong with him?

He needed to remember, at all times, what tonight was about. Sex. Pleasure. Not emotion. Not a relationship. It was okay for certain parts of his body below the waist to react like a match had been lit from nothing more than looking at the woman. Everything else was off-limits. He wasn’t looking for a woman to respect.

And he definitely wasn’t going to fall in love.

Marcus let his gaze move back down the woman’s barely-there leather dress. It didn’t look like respect was going to be much of an issue.

The dangerous curves began to shift beneath the thin layer of leather and he realized she was moving. Straight toward him, never once breaking stride, even in impossibly high heels.

Marcus lifted his eyes from her made-for-sex body and couldn’t miss the challenge in her gaze, a look that asked if he was man enough to handle her.

He’d come here tonight to find a woman, to proposition her, to claim her for one no-holds-barred night. Looked like he was the one who was about to be propositioned, instead.

He’d always liked his women tall and slim, not barely coming up to his chest like this one. A voice in his head told him she was way too young for him, young enough that if this were any other night, he’d walk away from her now. Hell, if things had gone as he’d planned for the past two years, he wouldn’t even be here.

But he was.

He wasn’t planning on walking away from whatever this woman offered. Not until first light.

And definitely not until he’d had his fill of those curves.

* * *

My God, he was beautiful.

Talk about big and strong—if this guy’s broad shoulders and gorgeous face weren’t enough, he stood out from the rest of the scummy crowd in his pressed shirt and slacks, clearly not giving a damn that he was different from them all.

He was the one.

The hassle of getting inside with all of the people clamoring to take pictures and have her sign autographs for them had almost been enough to make her hop back into the taxi and go hide out in her hotel again. What had she been thinking, coming out to a club to find a man? Especially when she knew darn well that pictures of her and the guy would surface on the Internet within hours.

But she hadn’t known where else to look, hadn’t been able to think of anywhere else to go. And she just didn’t care about the price of fame tonight, about the inevitable ramifications of what she was doing. Not when a long, lonely night was all that waited for her in her hotel suite if she turned tail and ran.