Logan (Wild Boys After Dark, #1)
Melissa Foster
Chapter One
BACHELOR PARTIES WERE the worst. Stella Krane couldn’t understand why guys needed a wedding in order to go to a bar, drink their asses off, flirt with strangers, and talk about it for the rest of their lives. Remember when…? It was like a rite of passage for uptight businessmen. Real men took it to a hotel room, hired strippers, and f*cked the hell out of them in ways their pretty little wives wouldn’t ever let them. She cringed at the thought. She wouldn’t want a man who did that. God, what was going on with her?
There was a time when Stella had dreamed of being someone’s pretty little wife, but that was before Carl Kutcher. Her gut twisted with the realization that he was getting out of jail in four days. The man had stolen every dream she’d ever had—and who knew when he’d steal her life. She no longer held on to the fantasy of a doting husband, a few kids, and a white picket fence. Now she was just happy to be alive.
“Hey, sweetheart, how about a little sugar with my drink?” drunken * number six asked as he leaned over the bar. He was with the bachelor party and had been drinking for the past few hours. Five guys with wedding rings pawing, groping, leering, making lewd comments, and trying their best to live out a stilted fantasy.
Stella eyed his wedding ring. Damn, she needed to get off tonight—and she wasn’t thinking about getting off work. It’d been too many months since she’d gotten laid, and she’d had it up to here watching everyone else play out their dirty fantasies. She longed for the feel of a man’s hands on her ass while his cock drove hard and deep inside her, allowing her brain to escape reality for a while. Stella wasn’t really a one-night-f*ck type of girl—but right then, boy did she wish she were. She missed the feel of a hard chest pressing against her and the deep, naughty whispers of a man telling her how much he wanted her. She’d never been that down-and-dirty girl until Kutcher. He’d sparked a side of her that she hadn’t known existed, a dangerous, rebellious side that turned her on in ways she never imagined possible. But that was before things went bad and Kutcher showed his true colors. The bastard. She refused to even think of him as Carl anymore. Now he was just Kutcher. Kutcher had taught her many things, like that men pretty much suck. They lie, cheat, and sometimes…they beat the hell out of you.
She narrowed her catlike green eyes at the mildly attractive, dark-haired sure thing before her and practically purred, “How about I get you another drink and you go home and f*ck your wife’s sugar-coated *?”
Jaw slack—check. Eyes wide—check. Oh, look, a bonus. Mr. I Want Some Sugar backed away from the bar.
Some days she felt like a babysitter and a whore at once, but hey, working at a bar in New York City might not be like running her own interior design business in Mystic, Connecticut, but it kept her alive. She missed Mystic. She missed the harbor, the safety of the small town, her friends. She missed her mother most of all. Her mother was battling cancer, but like everything else in her life, she’d had to sever all ties with her mother in order to keep her safe from Kutcher.
Stella had lived in Mystic her whole life. Until Kutcher. Fucking Kutcher. Slick-tongued, hard-bodied, and unfortunately, hard-fisted Kutcher. She’d dated him for only a few months before he showed his true colors. His possessiveness knew no boundaries, and she’d barely escaped with her life. No, this might not be Mystic, and she might have had to leave everything she knew and loved behind, but at least she’d survived—even if she had to spend the rest of her life pretending to be someone she wasn’t.
She felt the eyes of the man at the end of the bar on her again. He wasn’t part of the bachelor party—at least that was a plus. He’d come in an hour ago, ordered a Jack and Coke, and hadn’t moved anything but his piercing blue eyes—which had tracked her every move—since. He wore an expensive suit coat over a white dress shirt open at the neck, exposing a swath of sexy chest hair. Perfect for running her fingers through when she straddled him.
Lord.
What had Kutcher done to her? How had she gone from being a proper Wesleyan girl to a slutty-minded runaway? She’d met Carl Kutcher at a party for one of her interior design clients. He was tall and dark with a trim beard, eyes as black as night, and a quiet confidence that gave him an aura of importance. Stella had learned too late that there were two sides to the man who seemed too good to be true. He moved like the sea, calm and alluring one minute, angry and dark the next. His moods changed with the wind, and when they did, he left no room for escape.
Stella pushed thoughts of Kutcher away and tried to concentrate as she served up two more drinks, feeling the heat of Mr. Blue Eyes rolling over her breasts as she leaned down to wipe the bar. Hell if it didn’t make her entire body go hot. She’d been through enough over the past few months and knew better than to let a man intimidate her, but every time she tried to meet his gaze, she couldn’t do it. He was intimidating, in an edgy sort of way. Everything about him, from his thick dark hair and chiseled features to his iridescent baby blues, screamed sex, power, and intensity. Even his scent was musky and sensual, like liquid amber. She’d like to roll around in his scent, revel in the feel of his big hands on her breasts, her rib cage—
What the hell am I thinking?
She was pretty sure that her landlord, Mrs. Fairly, wouldn’t be thrilled with a midnight romp in her basement bedroom. Stella wasn’t exactly the quietest of lovers. She’d been lucky enough to find a place to stay where she could pay cash for rent and didn’t have to provide her social security number for the lease. She had to be completely untraceable, which meant no credit cards, no checks, and never using her ATM card. Fucking Kutcher had tracked her down everywhere she went, which was why she’d finally left Mystic and come to the Big Apple to disappear.