One Night with Sole Regret 05 Tie Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

batch of French toast.
    “Tell me about your band,” she said as she used a whisk to beat an egg, milk, and vanilla in a bowl.
    “Where should I start?”
    “At the beginning.”
    “It’s a long story,” he warned.
    “Good, because that caffeine high I warned you about is starting to kick in.”
    “So you want my long, boring band story to lull you to sleep?” he teased, feeling a bit more relaxed now that there was a wide counter between them. He was horny as hell, but he didn’t think his cock would be able to hammer its way through several inches of wood and granite. When Dawn added butter to the warming pan and licked a stray smear from her finger, he decided he shouldn’t bet on that certainty.
    “No, I want you to entertain me.” Her completely innocent comment had Kellen imagining not-so-innocent ways of entertaining her.
    What the hell? He hadn’t reacted this way to a pretty girl since his lust-fueled teenage years. Was this what it felt like to be Owen? No wonder he was always begging to try out Tony’s newest sex club. This perpetual state of arousal was downright distracting.
    “Um.” What had they been talking about? His band. Right. “We’ve been together as a unit for about seven years now.”
    “What do you call yourselves?”
    “Sole Regret.”
    Her eyes lit up, and a broad smile spread across her face. “That sounds familiar,” she said. “Maybe I do remember the announcement of your nomination at the Grammy’s.”
    “Was it accompanied by a really long air-horn blast?”
    She laughed. “That was you?”
    Kellen shook his head. “Owen. He isn’t into proper etiquette at award shows. He also yelled, ‘You suck!’ during the winner’s acceptance speech.”
    Dawn laughed. “I remember that. Didn’t they ask him to leave?”
    “We all had to leave. Owen’s a bit loud and outspoken when he’s been drinking, and we’d started celebrating our sure-win the night before.”
    “Oh,” she said, her lips in a beguiling pout. “He must have been terribly disappointed.”
    She sliced a piece of bread from a loaf, soaked it in the egg mixture, and then carefully laid it in the sizzling butter.
    “You wouldn’t know what that was like,” Kellen said.
    She glanced up. “Why do you think that?
    “Well, because you won your Grammy.”
    “But I didn’t win the World International or the Peabody Mason Piano Competitions, did I?”
    “Never heard of either of those.”
    “I also didn’t win—”
    “Dawn, you have a fucking Grammy. I’ve heard of that one. Celebrate your victories.”
    She gaped at him, her spatula gripped tightly in one fist. For a second, he thought she was going to smack him with it.
    “I don’t like to lose,” she said.
    Fire sparked in her voice, in her face. The rapid rise of her passion caused certain body parts in the room to rise. Again.
    “Name one person who likes to lose,” he said.
    She sucked in a little gasp and blinked at him. He suspected that no one dared to call her out on anything, which inspired the urge to find all her buttons and push them repeatedly, see just how brightly her fire could burn.
    “But I really don’t like to lose. It’s almost pathological.”
    He appraised her closely for a moment, looking beyond the sexual creature that had his full attention to the tense, slightly uptight, a-bit-too-proper woman he’d overlooked until now, what with the hormones swirling through his body. She seemed to cling to control a bit too tightly. He’d love to bind her and see how she responded to giving up complete control. To him.
    “There’s only one way to ensure you never lose,” he said.
    She flipped over a perfectly browned piece of French toast with her spatula. “What’s that?”
    “Don’t compete.”
    “Well, that’s not going to happen. I have a competitive streak a mile wide. I have to know if…”
    She met his eyes, and the fire in them surged. Would rendering her defenseless with ropes cause that fire to burn