Ah. Duh.
He’s moving to the door, searching for his socks and shoes. I can’t let him go. I just can’t.
“Are you here again tomorrow?” I ask, trying not to sound too leading.
“Yeah, I think so.”
I perch on the edge of the bed, pretending to be nonchalant, looking at the TV but not absorbing the image of the woman with a blunt bob slamming down on her big red button.Whammy!The red monster dances across the screen the way Leo was dancing minutes ago. “What time is your shift?”
“Why? You coming to harass me again?” That patented smirk lifts his cheeks. I want to kiss that smirk right off his mind-bogglingly symmetrical face.
“No, I was...” Rethinking everything, I change my mind. I can’t ask a stranger to spend the night with me in this hotel. Again, I don’t even know his last name. He might not be interested. On top of everything else, I don’t need to be saddled with further disappointment. “Forget it. Get home safe.”
He’s deciding what to do with the pizza box when he narrows his eyes into slits. “Oh, save it, what is it? What other demands could I possibly appease for you this evening, sir?”
“Sir?” My brows lift; fresh sparklers lighting off in my pelvis. “Kinky.”
He chucks the empty pizza box at me. I’d be worried about grease splatter, but this room is one giant grease splatter as it is. What’s a little burnt cheese to round out the mess?
“Stop deflecting.”
“Fine. Deflection mode deactivated,” I say with a sigh, remembering the loneliness monster under the bed building back my courage. “I was just thinking that if you had an early shift, you could, maybe, possibly, I don’t know, stay.”
I think about all I wanted to accomplish with this trip. No closure. NoMadcap Market. I could, at the very least, sleep with someone new. And Leo’s here and he’s handsome. He brought pizza and he played a board game with me, and he’s kind. What’s sexier than kindness?
“Stay.” He says it like a song lyric he’s misheard for years. “Stay here? With you?”
“See? This is why I said forget it.” I build my metaphorical wall back up to ward off rejection. I have had enough to last a lifetime this past month. “Forget it now. Forget I said anything. Go home. Leave me to wallow in peace.”
Like he’s reading my mind, he challenges jokingly, almost seductively, “If I leave, are you going to start blasting Taylor Swift again?”
“Ding, ding, ding!” I flush with a light, flirty laugh. “But if you’re here, if youstay, I could... I don’t know, show you my gratitude.”
Leo’s posture changes. “By which you mean...”
“You know, reward you for winning Monopoly.” I inch closer to him, dropping my shoulders and broadening my chest to match his stance. Fuck it, I want him. I want to taste him and ride him and smell like him in the morning.
I want him to fuck me so hard that I forget about the last month, the last six years, anything before this second and his dark brown eyes piercing into mine.
“How so?” he asks, standing his ground, making me come to him which turns me on to no end. Sends my nerve endings into a titillated frenzy.
“I could start by giving you a kiss,” I suggest, moving so that we’re toe-to-toe, nearly chest to chest. It would take little more than a tip to push my body weight into him. Have him catch me and kiss me and take me to bed. Ravish me with the lights on or off. His choice.
His eyes, which have grown darker with desire, drop to my lips with an audible gulp. “That sounds like a good start.”
With his permission, I cup the back of his neck and press in, allowing our lips to touch. A shiver races down my spine at the kiss. There’s a passion radiating from his end, cutting through the taste of pizza, that shocks me. Buckley hadn’t kissed me like that in months.
Leo’s hands possess an assurance as they wander across my back, eradicating any thought of Buckley, anything but this scorching moment.
One button at a time, I fumble with the front of Leo’s shirt, desperate to make closer contact. To run my fingers along the ridges of his ribs and watch him react. To nibble on his erect nipple and make him shudder.
But these damn buttons are getting in my damn way. “This,” I say breaking the kiss. “Off. Now.” I tug at the overly baggy shirt which is doing nothing to highlight the hard, gorgeous physique I can sense beneath it.
“You’re awfully demanding for someone who’s asked for a favor,” he says, nipping at my bottom lip, making me groan with intense pleasure. I use my palm to pull him closer to me as he charts a trail of playful bites down my jaw and my neck, shedding his shirt like I asked.
Through the pleasure, I retort, “You’re awfully demanding for someone who’s getting a free night in a two-and-a-half-star hotel.”
At this, he snaps back. “Who said I was staying?”
