Read Online The Thrill of It by Lauren Blakely - Free Book Online Page B

my brothers. Because they didn’t talk about my brothers. So why would they want to talk about why I was spending so much time with the married women in the swank Upper East Side building where they lived? But I knew I had a problem, and the cut on my face was my rock bottom. I didn’t need someone else to find the bottom of addiction for me. I fucking found it, and I decided to get my shit together after I spent the better part of my teenage years screwing married women in my building.
    I knew what I was doing was messing me up. Had known it for a long, long time. Not because the sex was bad. It was good. It was great. It was the stuff of legend.
    But as I toss my backpack on the floor, grab a cold beer from the fridge, and turn up the music on my iPod so I can blast Remy Zero throughout my whole apartment, I am also reminded that it was hollow.
    That I was so disconnected from all of them. I was ghosting through life, taking what I wanted, stealing what others had.
    But the one night with Harley was the closest I’ve ever felt to right . Maybe that sounds crazy, but I felt like we were both in it together, that we weren’t chess pieces for the other person to move around. We’d showed our cards and there was no bluffing.
    That’s the problem, I realize, as I drink my beer, and the band sings about falling to the ground.
    She can’t operate like that, and hell if I know if I can either.
    So if I get caught up in her, and I will, I fucking will, what happens to me when she realizes she’s not ready? What if I’m just a quick fix to her, and she turns around and goes back to Cam? Or ditches me? And then I’m worse off.
    Back to all my old ways.
    To all the afternoons in high school I spent tangled up with Cassie Fitzgerald in her penthouse, or Elle Windsor in her husband’s town car, or even the sexy trophy wife – Sloan McKay – of one of the biggest hedge fund manager’s in New York. All while he was busy pulling millions, I was taking care of his wife in the bedroom since he didn’t anymore. She was an artist too, a painter, and the only one I ever felt an inkling of a connection with, the only one who remotely seemed like more than a conquest. She moved out of the building quickly though, and I moved on to the next woman.
    Such a rush. Such a thrill. They got what they wanted from me. From how I made them feel. From the high of being the young guy who could turn them on.
    If I walked into a frat house and told my story, I’d have high-fives six ways to Sunday. If my friends knew they’d make a statue for me, give me the chair at the head of the table in the cafeteria, build an honorary wing in my name and ask for blessings before any date with a girl, praying to Trey Westin, patron saint of Has A Way with Women.
    It’s the tale that gets passed down from one generation of frat brothers to the next. Only there was more to my conquests than bagging the hottest babes.
    There always is.
    They were a way to forget.
    I rub my hand absently against the trio of sunbursts on my shoulder, one of the tats that I designed myself a few months ago. To remember. To never forget. Then I toast heavenward, a futile toast, and finish my beer. The coldness and the fizz roots me back to the moment. Shakes me out of the past, the memories. If I spend too much time there, I’ll never move on. I need to start over tomorrow. See my shrink. Sort this out. Go back to being friends with Harley again. Because I can’t stand not having her in my life.
    Almost as much as I can’t stand not kissing her.
    I turn my head and sniff my shirt, and fuck…I can still smell her on me. Her wild cherry smell lingers all over my shirt. Her intoxicating, sexy-as-hell scent from when she was all snug against me. I close my eyes, inhale, and I am right back to thirty minutes ago in the courtyard, remembering how she touched me, kissed me, ran her hands in my hair.
    In seconds, I am rock hard again. This is what she does to me. This is all it