“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked Charlie a couple of hours after his meeting.
He hadn’t really said much about his meeting since he had met me back at the café in the middle of the casino. While I sat to the left of him at a table at Palate—a really, really expensive restaurant that was way out of my budget—he grabbed my chair leg and pulled me closer to him.
“Not really.”
My lips curled into a frown because I loved talking to him, and he didn’t seem disappointed, but he was a bit pissed. Thankfully, he had dropped most of his annoyance once he picked me up from the café.
“It was a waste of my time,” he said, teeth gritted. He blew out a breath and fixed the strap of my pink dress. “Time I could’ve been working or spending with you.”
“Aw,” I murmured. “It’s not a waste of time to figure out what you don’t want to do in life. If you don’t want investors or VCs in your business, you don’t need to have them. Some businesses do, but I don’t think yours does. They’d hinder it anyway.”
Charlie’s business had a sexual component, and investors loved and hated any business that revolved around sex. They were the biggest hypocrites I had ever witnessed because half of them—as far as I knew—were retired frat boys who cheated on their wives with sex workers or sexualized secretaries.
Sex sells. Except nobody wanted to admit they enjoyed it.
“Sorry for being annoyed on our first real date,” he murmured.
“Well,” I said, straightening his tie, “why don’t we forget all about your meeting?”
“And?”
My lips curled into a smirk. “I was walking around the casino after you left and found?—”
“I thought I told you to stay in the café.”
I playfully rolled my eyes. “I’m not helpless.”
“Someone might have stolen you.”
“Oh, believe me, I would not be someone’s first choice to steal.” I giggled.
He snatched my chin and lifted it. “You’d be my first choice to steal.”
“Are you saying that you’re a kidnapper?”
A low chuckle left his mouth. “If it was you, yes.”
I poked him in the stomach, where I knew he was the most sensitive. “Anyway, as I was saying, I was walking around the casino when you left—trying to get kidnapped, obviously—and there’s a club opening tonight.”
“Where?”
“I think it was between some Mexican restaurant and a chapel. I saw this half-drunk couple who was stumbling nearby with a woman wearing a tux and a man wearing a veil, munching on tacos.” I laughed, thinking back to it. “We should go! There was some good dance music playing out front.”
“I have something better,” he hummed, tugging on a lock of my red hair that I had curled earlier. “This casino has mini-golf on the third floor. Let’s go there first, and then we can get drunk at whichever club you want to dance your pretty little ass off in.”
“Fuck, you’re so hot,” Charlie growled against my lips, his drink spilling on the floor.
I danced beside him, one hand around his collar, the other clutching my drink. I forgot how many drinks I had already drunk. Three? Five? Maybe six? Who was counting anymore, honestly? This night had been so fun, especially the mini-golf.
Music thumped through the club. I moved my hips from side to side, grinding my body against Charlie’s. We had gone to clubs before, but we always danced around each other, our bodies barely touching. Now, he was mine, and I wasn’t going to waste the opportunity.
Plus, with the alcohol running through my veins, I didn’t want to stop.
“I wanna bring you to Radiant so badly,” he murmured.
Pleasure coursed through my body, and I pressed my thighs together.
Going to Radiant with Charlie?
