“Aside from cat sweaters and yowling holiday mewsic?”
“Did you saymewsic?” When I snorted, he shook his head and said, “I’m stealing that one.”
Try as I might—and I did really try—I couldn’t remember the last time I’d smiled this much in one evening. It wasn’t that I didn’t smile in my day-to-day life aboard my ship. I had to. It was part of my job. But the expression never felt like this, impossible to hide, making my cheeks ache. “It’s all yours.”
His eyes twinkled, and I traced the lights reflecting in them the way I used to trace my finger over the constellations at night. Only instead of horses or serpents, Joshua’s stars made the shape of full, kissable lips, a necktie draped over a bedpost.
“There’s a Winter Revel custom I think you might not know about.”
“Is there?” I asked, my heart picking up an extra beat as he intertwined his fingers with mine.
“Well”—his voice dropped low—“on Vorp, when two people meet for the first time on Revel, it’s custom that they must see each other naked before parting ways.”
“Custom?” I peered up at him through my lashes. “Really?”
He held up his free hand. “I don’t make the rules.”
“Of course not.”
“In fact,” he went on, making a show of looking around like what he was about to say was of the utmost importance, “Vorpols believe that if this custom isn’t observed, then somewhere, sadly, tragically, a kitten won’t find its forever home.”
Sinking my teeth into my grinning lower lip, I asked, “Joshua, would you like to see me naked?”
With his eyes locked on mine, he replied, “More than anything in the Known Universe.” While I laughed, he tugged at his collar. “But only if you’re finished with your dessert.”
“I’m done with this one,” I said, pointing my chin at the cherries. “But I think I’m ready for the next.”
After a heavy pause that spun me up like a faster-than-light jump drive, he grasped my hand more tightly, slid out of the booth, and pulled me to my feet.
3
The elevator was almostat capacity when we raced through the doors, wiggling our way through a pack of tipsy, ugly sweater–wearing LunaCorp execs. I hadn’t let go of Joshua’s hand since we’d left our booth. And as the elevator rose, his thumb brushed over mine. Ripples of sensation spread out from the spot in perfect, overlapping circles until I felt his touch everywhere at once. It wasn’t enough, though, only his thumb. I wanted every part of him. I wanted his lips, his hands, his tongue. I wanted him the way I wanted sunshine after weeks of rain. But I had to wait. My room was all the way on the forty-eighth floor, and it wasn’t until the doors opened on forty-five that our final fellow passenger bid us a slurred good night.
“Thank fuck,” Joshua rasped, his hand gripping mine.
I didn’t wait for the doors to close again before I turned, fisted his tie, pulled him close, and moaned in relief at the feel of his lips against mine. They were just as full and soft as I’d imagined they’d be. His hand slid across my low back, warm and firm as he urged me closer, groaning when Ibrushed my tongue over his. He tasted like cherries and chocolate.
When the elevatordinged, and the doors slid open on my floor, he slipped his arm low around my hips, hoisting me up. While I wrapped my legs around his waist, he cradled my thighs and stopped kissing me only long enough to ask, “Room number?” as he carried me out into the hallway.
Burying my hands in his hair, I licked a meandering trail up his neck. Then I took his earlobe between my teeth and slurred, “4810.”
He spun around, pushing me up against a door I was pretty sure wasn’t mine, and kissed me with such blind hunger it was almost indecent. Pressing my hips against his thick, rigid length, I sighed. Then I laughed when whoever was in the room that definitely wasn’t mine shouted, “Hey! Who’s out there?”
“It’s…down the hall,” I managed while his teeth grazed over my neck where it met my shoulder, making my vision go hazy. “Last room on the right.”
I clung to him, digging my fingers into his shoulders, and I thought I’d lost a shoe. Not that I cared. Who the hell cared about shoes when he’d unzipped my dress and unclasped my bra before we’d made it halfway down the hall. I was half tempted to skip the room entirely and beg him to fuck me on top of the ice machine. But then he pushed me up against another door and said, “This one’s yours,” against my lips.
Reaching back, I fumbled blindly to touch my thumb to the security panel. Then I wrapped my arms around him again as he flung the door open, carried me through, and kicked it shut again after it banged off the wall.
I yanked his tie off and unbuttoned his shirt in a franticdash as he walked me to the wall, working my dress up over my hips. While I slid his shirt over his broad shoulders, he reached down to unbuckle his belt.
“Do we need protection?” I asked, panting like some sort of wild animal in heat as he slid my panties to the side.
“No,” he said, his lips skimming the sacred spot behind my right ear, his finger sliding through the wetness between my folds, slipping easily inside me. “I’m on the pill.”
“Good,” I praised, arching my back as a second finger joined the first. “That’s really good.”
His soft kisses along my exposed throat, his hand cupping my ass, his fingers moving inside me, were superb. But it wasn’t enough, and I’d never been called a patient woman.
