“Asa?” He shushed me as he traced a random pattern across the taut skin of my stomach with the blunt edge of his fingernail. I stiffened automatically when his fingers hooked under the stretchy top of my leggings. “What exactly are you doing?”

It was a stupid question. I knew what he was doing, I was just having a hard time rationalizing that I was actually allowing him to get me naked on top of the bar. I felt like I should probably be protesting harder, should be using some sort of reasonable argument to prevent this from going down. But I wasn’t. It was hot, the sight of him standing between my legs as he worked my pants down my long legs and tossed my heels somewhere over his shoulder. He sighed in pleasure when he encountered nothing underneath, which I knew he would do. I had just anticipated that taking place at his place, not here. I don’t think he knew I could see him in the mirror, so it was the first time I actually got to see what others saw when he looked at me. It was beautiful.

His eyes were heavy-lidded and focused only on me. His nostrils flared in excitement and I could see the way he actually licked his lips in appreciation. He looked hungry and almost as needy as I always felt around him. This was the Asa that kept me rooted to the spot. This was the Asa I could have if I got him to let go of everything else he was holding on to. This was the Asa I no longer wanted to deny that I loved.

He dipped his head down and kissed me right above my belly button, and let his tongue dip in and out of the small indent. It made me laugh, and he finally lifted his head and met my upside-down gaze in the mirror. I felt like the heat radiating in that glowing gaze would fuse us together forever.

He smiled at me and my heart tried to fall out of my chest and land at his feet. He straightened and picked up the bottle he had set down on the bar moments ago.

There was a small pop as he slipped the top off of it and the earthy and musky scent of scotch hit my nose. I knew what he was going to do, thought I was prepared for it, but somehow having a gorgeous guy pour a shot down the side of your throat and then chase it all the way down your body just wasn’t something anyone could really prepare for.

The booze trickled across the top and down the side of my breast. A little bit of it found its way all the way across my stomach and pooled in my belly button, and there was the trail of liquid that hit the point of my body where it was wrapped around him and ran over the inner curve of my thigh. Asa used his mouth to get every single last drop. The sensation of his mouth moving over every single surface of my skin was electrifying. When he finally got to that sensitive spot where my leg curved in to the parts of me that were all kinds of flutter and greed, I lost my ability to hold myself up anymore and collapsed on the bar with my hair falling into God only knew where on the other side of it. I could see his blond head between my legs, felt the wonderful torture he was subjecting me to with his tongue and teeth. It was when he reached up with his one free hand, the one that wasn’t busy teasing and playing with all the wet heat between my legs, and laced our fingers together that I lost it.

It was so sweet, so tender, and so out of character for him that it made me fall apart and burst into a million and one tiny slivers of pleasure and love. In the mirror I watched him as he watched me break for him. His eyes glowed from someplace deep within and I wondered how anything survived inside that kind of fire within him.

I lay there, unable to move at all as he rose to his feet. He put his hands on the bar next to my hips and leaned over me. He placed a light kiss on the center of my breastbone, and then one on each cheek. When his mouth finally settled on mine, I tasted myself and scotch, and it was enough to have my girly parts getting worked back up again. I curled my free arm around his shoulders and threaded my fingers through the back of his hair.

“A good life doesn’t seem so far out of reach, looking at you laid out before me with the taste of you all over my tongue, Red.”

The words were so quiet I almost thought I had imagined them but when he kissed me again it was so soft, so sweet, and I could swear it had part of his heart in it, and I knew that I would give everything I had in me to give to make him wake up and be right here in this place with me, right now. This was too good to miss and he deserved to experience it even if he didn’t think so.

I traced the outside of his ear and felt him shiver. “You better make sure Rome doesn’t get more than he bargained for when he comes in tomorrow and looks at the video feed from tonight.”

He chuckled and straightened up. He moved away from me to gather my scattered clothes and helped me off the bar so that I could get dressed. He had to hold me up when all the blood rushed back out of my head, which led to some pretty intense kissing and groping since I was still naked. It made us both groan and he reluctantly pulled away, telling me he was going to make sure the video wasn’t going to pop up anywhere it could return to haunt either of us. His smile turned from playful to predatory in the blink of an eye as he walked backward and told me: