“Correct,” Annie says, inserting herself into the conversation from the row of seats behind us.
“Want to join me?” he asks, and the small, hopeful smile makes me feel like a piece of shit for wanting to say no. I have a stubborn woman I need to convince to sleep with me, though I suppose I have a few hours until she’ll be back at the hotel.
“Sure,” I say, climbing out of the car and quickly moving around to meet Jaxon as he opens his door. An old pro at this, Jaxon is great about waiting until we’re in position before moving.
“I’ll get you some dinner sent up, Carter,” Annie says, typing furiously on her phone as we walk toward the elevators.
Once we’re all packed inside, Jaxon gives the order for Annie and the rest of his team to go to bed, assuring them anything they need can wait until tomorrow morning when they have their usual staff meeting.
Weston tells one of our officers to wait and get the food from the staff when it arrives but sends the rest of the team of close protection officers to bed. The CPOs stay in the two rooms next to Jaxon’s and the one across the hall. Normally, Kelsey’s team is monitoring the security footage at the hotel and coordinating with the CPOs to respond to anything that might come up while Jaxon is in his room. Unfortunately for us, there are a lot of hotels in Japan that don’t have cameras in the hallways, and we’re staying at one of them.
Once we enter Jaxon’s suite, I do a quick security check, even though Weston’s officers confirmed the room was clear before we entered.
“You’re kind of a paranoid guy, you know?” Jaxon teases as he pours himself a glass of whiskey from the tumbler on the table. He lifts it my direction, silently asking if I’d like a drink.
I shake my head.
“A couple of tours in combat zones will do that to a guy,” I say.
Jaxon’s face turns serious, a common side effect of mentioning anything about my deployments. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I knew what I was signing up for, and overall, it was a good experience. Plus, I’m one of the lucky ones—the paranoia only hits when I’m working on security assignments. I know I’m safe at home, which is a lot more than many of the guys I served with.”
Jaxon nods, leaning back on the sofa with a sigh.
“You want to talk about what’s going on with you?” I ask, dropping into the chair across from him.
We’re interrupted by a knock at the door, and I jump up to grab our food. I don’t typically eat after the shows, but at the sight of the tuna nigiri on the plates, my stomach rumbles to life.
I deposit the food onto the black oval table between us, handing Jaxon a napkin with two chopsticks inside.
Jaxon seems uninterested in continuing the conversation, so I let it drop for the moment as we both dig into our plates of sushi.
“How are things going with you and Kelsey?” Jaxon asks.
I consider acting like I don’t know what he’s talking about, but the truth is I need someone to talk to about this. After our not-date datesand then that night together in Berlin, it felt like we were something, especially after Jaxon all but gave us his blessing. But then our plane touched down in Tokyo, and Kelsey went right back to being coworker Kelsey.
We still went out to dinner during our day off at the restaurant she’d picked out—a little restaurant hidden away in a back alley with only six seats in the entire place. We had a front-row seat as the chef prepared our four-course dinner on the flat, stainless-steel stove in front of us. It was delicious, though the image of the live lobster being placed directly onto the cooktop with a few ice cubes and then covered with a circular, domed lid will haunt me forever.
But we didn’t hold hands as we walked there or back, and when we reached our hotel, Kelsey went back to her room, declaring she had too much work to do to come to mine when I’d asked. I’d been willing to chalk it up to tiredness on our first night in Tokyo, since we’d literally been on a plane the whole day, but I knew, when she’d turned me down the second night, that we’re on two different pages.
It hadn’t stopped me from trying again last night, unwilling to let this thing between us fizzle out. The relief I’d felt when she agreed to spend the night with me—I can’t even begin to describe it, though I tried to show it to her with every kiss and every touch last night.
“It’s confusing,” I say, answering Jaxon’s question honestly.
“Oh, yeah?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. “Why’s that?”
“I think she likes me, but she also seems fine with just hooking up occasionally.”
“And you’re…not okay with hooking up?”
“I mean, I’m not complaining about that part, but I was pretty clear the first night that I wasn’t okay with it beingjustabout sex,” I say.
“Ahh,” is Jaxon’s only reply.
Looking around the empty space, I realize we haven’t heard many notifications of someone coming up to Jaxon’s room with him lately.
“Speaking of just sex,” I say. “Aren’t you supposed to be a rock star? Why are you spending your night with me?”
