But not tonight. Not here. Not yet.
“I’m sure,” I say. “Have fun.”
They leave and I get my new key. “We’ll have your things packed and transferred,” the bellman tells me.
I take the opposite elevators up to the fifteenth floor. The lights in Tokyo are amazing, and our hotel is all glass. You can get a 360-degree view of the city.
I take off my leather pants and red top and slide into a hotel bathrobe. Heaven. I flip through the room service menu and am just about to order everything on it when the doorbell rings. My suitcases. Filled with all kinds of crazy clothes I won’t even have a chance to wear.
I open the door expecting to see a towering cart of luggage, but instead it’s Jordan. Dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved gray T-shirt.
My heart starts hammering straight through the terry cloth. “Hi,” I say.
He nods. “Can I come in?”
I stand with my back pressed against the door as he enters. I feel the air leave my body in a solid rush when he brushes past me. The door swings closed behind us.Click.
“Nice view,” he says, keeping moving toward the window. I follow him. I catch a glimpse of myself in the hall mirror and wish I hadn’t taken my clothes off. But Jordan has seen me in just a bathing suit many times before.
“What’s up?” I ask him.
He doesn’t turn around, just keeps looking out the window. “I don’t know,” he says. “I had them switch your room so you could be on the other side of the hotel. And now I’m here and… I don’t know.”
It feels like someone set off sparklers inside my chest. “You switched my room?”
He turns around. His black eyes find mine. “You didn’t go out,” he says.
I hold his gaze. “No,” I say. “I didn’t.”
Suddenly everything I’ve held in for the last few weeks starts bubbling up to the surface. Our talk in my bed and those photos and the breakup with Rainer and the tabloid story and Alexis—the truth that she hid from me. And Jordan—always, Jordan. Jordan there, buzzing in the background like white noise. Jordan filling my head. Jordan in my dreams. Jordan here, now.
But I don’t have time to say any of it because in the next moment he’s closing the space between us.
He takes my face gently in his hands and touches his lips to mine. But almost before they meet he’s drawing me in tighter. His hands work down my back. His lips are urgent on mine—fierce, pressing, like he’s trying to tell me something with their movement. I reach up and feel his neck, his jaw. I let my hands explore his face. The curve of his neck, the smooth skin below his ear, where his silver scar still sits. He pulls me in closer so we’re chest to chest. I can feel his heart, wild and free, against my own.
We keep kissing as he angles me toward the bed. We crash onto it, my lips never leaving his.
I can’t breathe. I swear I will be swallowed up in darkness soon, but I don’t care. Jordan’s mouth on mine is hot and wet and desperate. I have no idea how I could have gone so long without him. How I could possibly not have suffocated without him near me. It feels insane that we’ve somehow been able to stay away from each other.
His fingers find my sides, sliding me up to the pillows. My hands dig into his shoulders. I feel the creases of his muscles, the knots down his back. He moans into my mouth, and I arch up against him.
His lips leave mine and find my collarbone. He pulls impatiently at the top of my robe and edges it down around my shoulders. He kisses my neck, my cheek, right below my ear. I gasp and dig my fingers into his back and then down, toward the hem of his T-shirt. They slide up underneath, like they’re working on their own. I feel his skin—hot and soft. He inhales sharply as my fingers graze over his abs.
“Paige,” he whispers.
My hands trail down and find the edge of his T-shirt. For one brief moment his eyes meet mine.Whatever you want, they seem to say.
I pull his shirt up and then he’s lifting it over his head and letting it fall to the floor.
He’s above me and I sit up, placing my hands gently on his shoulders and letting them wander down. I feel his biceps move, the hard muscles under his skin flex and release. He’s so beautiful. I want to tell him. I want to tell him a million things.
His hands are back on my neck. He’s touching whatever skin is exposed, which isn’t a lot, considering this bathrobe is, like, the size of Texas.
I pull at the tie at my waist and then Jordan covers my hands with his own. His eyes look into mine and I know what he’s asking but I just reach up and kiss him and as I do, the bathrobe loosens and Jordan gently opens it, sliding it down off my shoulders until it pools around me on the bed.
I’m completely naked, and as soon as the robe is by my sides I have the distinct, immediate urge to cover myself. But Jordan won’t let me. “Don’t,” he says. “Please let me see you.”
He takes my hands firmly in his and puts them on his face, and then he runs his own up and down my back. The feeling of his fingers on my bare skin makes me shiver against him. I press my lips to his temple and then the robe is forgotten, lost in the sheets, and we’re skin to skin.
