Page 18 of After-Hours Heir

“Oh, I—”

“I’ll text you. But I think it’s best if we don’t…linger here. On this.”

“Okay.”

She felt absolutely disintegrated by that. She wanted to stay with him. All night. But he wanted to be finished. She had a feeling that this had done something to him emotionally, but he wasn’t telling her what it was.

Maybe this was why he wanted anonymity. He was physically perfect. He had done things to her that had forever altered the way that she felt about her own body.

Perhaps his emotions were the problem.

She had been foolish enough to think that he was emotionally available because of the texting.

But there was a reason he wanted the distance.

And it wasn’t the same reason that she wanted it.

She stumbled around the bedroom, collecting her clothes.

“If only I could turn a light on—”

“No,” he said, his voice hard. Harsh.

And she felt that tickle again at the back of her brain. She dismissed it as she made the decision to abandon her underwear and simply put on her bra.

Her shoes, she knew, were in the other room, and she walked out of the bedroom, searching for them with her feet. She found them and slipped them on.

And then she stood there for a long moment in the darkness. The silence.

Was this it?

He said that they would text, but she had a horrible feeling that this wasn’t the beginning of something at all.

She had a feeling that it was the end.

She had been so afraid of that. So really, what was keeping her from running back in there and turning the light on?

You care too much about him. About what he wants.

It was true. This hurt. But she really did care a damn sight too much about why he was the way he was to violate what he’d asked for in some way.

So she stumbled out of the hotel room and into the hallway. Knowing that she was changed forever.

Devastated that it wasn’t in the way she had hoped.

Now suddenly everything felt terrible.

Absolutely everything.

She had no idea how she was going to survive the devastation of Christos Onassis without the man that she had come to love.

But she had the feeling she was going to have to figure it out.

CHAPTER FIVE

AFTERSHEWASGONEChristos turned the lights on and poured himself a drink. She might come back. He froze, standing there in the living area of the suite. He almost hoped that she would. For one strangling moment.

What had just happened between them had been…singular. He had never experienced anything like it before in his life, and he was not a man given to fantasy, nor was he a man who overinflated things. And yet.