About us.
About this night.
Why break the spell? She is whoever she is, and that’s all I need to know.
She lifts her chin expectantly. “Am I going to tell you . . . what?”
“Tell me if you’ll ever come to one of my grand parties? I’m throwing them for you after all.” I channel Leo-as-Gatsby, leaning into our roles, but I’m telling the entire truth. I would love to see her at one of my very own Carpe Diem fêtes.
“Maybe I am. You did buy the house to stalk me,” says Daisy-For-Now as she adjusts my bow tie.
While she fiddles with the material, I stare shamelessly at her lips, red and slick. I bet they taste like cherries.
I could stare all night, but the iron spike in my tux pants wouldn’t be a good look on stage.
I focus on the contest. Two men dressed as the Blues Brothers bound up the steps. After Spencer introduces them, they kiss each other, earning thunderous applause.
Next are Beyoncé and Jay-Z lookalikes. Spencer plays a mashup of both the artists’ songs as the couple struts across the stage. Their applause is solid but not enough to take the lead from the guys.
Now it’s down to the flapper and me.
Before we go, I grab her hand. “You want to win?”
“Always,” she purrs.
I lean close to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “Kissing seems to work for the audience,” I whisper.
“All this for a kiss?”
I run my knuckles along her jaw. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with if you think I wouldn’t move heaven and earth just to kiss you.”
Her eyes say she doubts me, but when she sways a little closer, her body says she wants me to move mountains for her. “You’re right. I have no clue. But you have no idea if we’d be any good at kissing.”
I know this much, though—I like bets and I like winning. “Maybe not, but I’m a betting kind of man.”
“Then I guess you’ll have to take your chances with me,” she says as Spencer starts our introduction.
“Walking straight from the pages of the great American novel, or Baz Luhrmann’s film set, it’s Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan,” he booms.
We stroll across the stage as the music swells with the opening notes from the film. Spencer doesn’t fuck around.
I feel a bit like Jay entering his massive soiree, watching the scene unfold before him.
There’s no time like the present. That’s what the last few years have taught me. Seize every chance. They don’t come around twice.
My flapper turns, sidles up against me, grabs my lapel. “Come and get it,” she whispers.
I believe I will.
I rope my arm around her back to haul her against me. The crowd goes wild before I even drop my lips to hers.
Yes, New York City, this is what the dating apps will never deliver. Chemistry. Contact. The spark and the sizzle.
I run a thumb along her jaw and bring my mouth to hers. As I close my eyes, I dust a soft, sexy kiss to her kissable lips. She murmurs deliciously as I prolong the moment, like she’s humming with the prospect of pleasure.
The kiss doesn’t last too long. Maybe one, two, three enticingly fantastic seconds before I break it. But the audience roars like a deafening drum.
My other half grabs my bow tie, tugs me against her again, and steals another kiss. Her lips hunt mine in a determined, devouring kiss that sends a hot spark of pleasure down my spine.
Straight to my dick.
Hello, gorgeous mystery woman, meet my cock, who likes you very much.
Judging from the way she’s melting in my arms, this night is heading in the horizontal direction once we leave this stage.
“Get a room, get a room,” Spencer calls out, and we wrench apart for real this time.
The crowd goes wilder.
She looks dazed, her brown eyes all lust-drunk and glossy, her lips bruised, her red lipstick smeared.
I take her hand and guide her off the stage with only one goal in mind.
Take. Her. Home.
But not a moment later, Spencer calls us back on stage. “And the winners of the costume contest are the flapper and the gangster, aka Daisy and Jay,” he says.
My date claps in excitement. She seems to embrace the win from deep within her soul.
When we leave the game room, I grab her hand. “Let me buy you a drink.”
“A drink sounds perfect. I’ll have a . . . Macallan,” she says.
That’s . . . oddly specific. Macallan is my habitual order and not exactly common. But I go with it when we reach the bar, motioning for the bartender, who quickly brings us two.
I lift my tumbler in a toast. “To costumes and mystery.”
She clinks back. “I have a theory about costumes too,” she says after she drinks, returning to our earlier topic.
“Do tell.”
“I think sometimes we have to pretend to be something else to get what we really want.”
“And what do you really want?”
“What everyone does.”
“And what’s that?”
“Oh, you know. Fun. A good time. Adventure. And, most of all, a happy ending,” she says. “So, how does the night end happily for you, mister?”
I lift a brow, letting my gaze answer her question as I stare at her lips. “I hope the same way it does for you.”
She sets down her glass, licks the corner of her lips. “Then tell me one thing before we have this . . . happy ending tonight,” she says, gesturing to the door, the only direction I want to go with her. Out.
“Name it.”
She smiles at me like she’s been in on some private joke all along. “Your friends dared you to kiss me.”
It’s a statement, not a question. She’s good—really fucking good. “No, I chose to,” I say, holding my ground.
Her eyes are doubtful. “I don’t believe you. Do you know how I know?”
“How do you know?” A tiny bit of worry trips through me. She might have figured me out.
She slides closer, her body inches from mine. “I was watching you earlier, Gatsby. Watching you watching me. I saw the bill go down on the bar.” She nods to the scene of the bet a mere hour ago. “I saw you walk over. And I hope you enjoy your hundred. After all, I got what I wanted.”
Holy fuck. She played me. She fucking played me beautifully. “And what’s that?”
“A donation to charity,” she says.
“That’s all you wanted?”
“Well. I didn’t mind this.”
She rises on her tiptoes and gives me a wet, deep kiss. My skin flashes hot, then even hotter when she runs her hand through my hair, hauls me closer, kisses me harder.
When she ends the kiss, her lipstick is a mess and I love the look on her.
“Number,” I say roughly, dazed by her passionate kiss. “Give me your number. Give me your name. I want to see you again. Tonight. Any night.”
She looks kiss-drunk too, but she quickly blinks away the fog. “No.”
I stare. “What?” I can’t have heard right.
“I don’t want to be your bet, Gatsby,” she says, adjusting my bow tie. With a last pat, she spins on her heel and heads for the door.
No fucking way.
I won’t let her go.
I slice through the crowds after her, tracking her silhouette as she moves like a cat.