I huffed out a laugh at the sheer gravity of his words. They were spoken with such a deadly calm, I didn’t for one second think he wasn’t serious. “I’m not sure we need to do all that. I just needed to get away without bringing him back to my room.”
He turned his attention back to me, a beat passing. Two. Three. “How about my room, then?”
A slow smile swept across my mouth. I speared my fingers through the short hair at the base of his head, my body lighting up over the possibility of what this man could do to it.
My time here was nothing more than a stopover. In less than twelve hours, I’d be on my way to a new life with my daughter. And I’d never see this sexy beast of a man again. So what did it matter?
What didanypart of tonight matter?
“That would definitely be easier, considering my teenage daughter is alone in mine.”
It took only a moment before realization dawned. His features hardened even more, his jaw ticking as he scanned the bar once again. And I could tell the second he’d spotted Chief Creep. His entire body went stiff, his murderous glare alone enough to send people scurrying.
I looked over my shoulder and confirmed my wannabe suitor did just that, not daring to even spare me a glance. I exhaled a sharp sigh of relief, knowing that even if the guy who wouldn’t take no for an answer never saw my knight in brooding glory set foot in Laurel’s and my room, he’d assume this man would be there. And that was good enough for me.
“He got the message,” my protector rumbled. “But just in case, text your daughter and tell her not to open the door for anyone.”
There was absolutely no reason for my stomach to flip over his concern for Laurel when that had been solely my job the entirety of her life. That probably wasn’t even the reason for the feeling anyway. The flutters in my stomach were no doubt just the letdown of nerves since I wasn’t in fight-or-flight mode anymore.
“She’s a mouthy teenager who wouldn’t open the door if there was a fire. Believe me, she’s fine,” I said. “And I’ll be upthere soon enough. We’ve been at each other’s throats for two days, so I was just giving her some space.”
“For how long?”
“What?”
“How long were you giving her space?”
“Oh…” I darted my gaze between his eyes, reading every ounce of desire reflected back at me. “An hour or two.”
“So, you’ve got, what? Forty-five minutes left?” he asked, his gaze dropping to my mouth.
I caught my lower lip with my teeth, loving the way this man looked at me. Who the hell needed a lemon drop when I could get drunk on that alone? “Something like that.”
He met my eyes once again, a thousand promises in his stare. “I can do a lot in forty-five minutes.”
CHAPTER FOUR
ATLAS
One minute,we were standing in the bar, warding off a slimy piece of shit, and the next, we were in the elevator, standing on opposite sides of the car. As if we both knew as soon as we touched—again—it was game over. All bets off.
I’d known she was gorgeous from the second she’d stepped into the elevator earlier and dropped her book at my feet. With her wavy dark-brown hair that fell just past her shoulders, those clear green eyes, and that mouth, there was no denying it.
But watching her now as she stood across from me, her cheeks flushed, lips parted, and eyes bright…Fuck. She was looking at me like she wanted to eat me alive, and I was inclined to let her.
The oversized sweatshirt she wore did nothing to accentuate the firm little body I’d had practically wrapped around me, but fuck if it didn’t make my cock twitch. Just the thought of her strolling to my bed wearing nothing but that had me hard as fucking granite.
From the way her eyes kept drifting down…how she caught that plump lower lip with her teeth, a look of hunger overcoming her features, I had no doubt she saw my reaction to her. My cock was a little difficult to hide.
It was taking everything in me not to descend on her. Not to close the distance between us in two long strides and crash my mouth against hers once again. I wanted to taste her every-fucking-where.
And I wasn’t going to rest until I’d done so.
As soon as the elevator doors opened on my floor, I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. Neither, it seemed, could she.
We met in the middle, her body crashing into mine as I cupped her ass and lifted her up. Gripping my face, she wrapped her legs around my waist and brought her lips down on mine.
She still tasted just as sweet as whatever she’d been drinking, and I moaned into her mouth. Her answering whimper as she ground her pussy against me had my cock throbbing, desperate to slide inside her.
