We slip into the empty elevator. As the doors hiss shut, Asher pins me against the mirror, cups my face, and kisses me—urgent and unguarded, nothing for the cameras. I slide my arms around him, and the world outside dissolves beneath the April sky.
CHAPTER 12
ASHER
The elevator is slow,the way all hotel elevators are when you most need them not to be. I have my hands on her hips, feeling the Givenchy fabric bunch under my fingers. The mirrors reflect us—her cheeks flushed, mine sharpened with hunger—and for a second I see what the world must see when they look at us: two people torn out of context, beautiful and haunted, desperate and barely holding it together.
Emma kisses me, hard, with the kind of recklessness you can only get away with when you know the elevator has thirty more seconds before the doors open. I grab her jaw and let myself get lost, all the carefully rationed restraint from the past week blowing apart. When the elevator dings, I have to force myself to pull away, and even then her hand stays knotted in my hair, like she’s making absolutely sure nothing can move me from orbit.
We barely make it down the chandeliered hallway, trailing a wake of giggles and near-misses, tripping into each other’s feet. She fumbles the keycard twice before the light finally flashes green. The door swings open, and we’re inside, the suite bigger than my first apartment, Paris glowing beyond the plate glass. She drops her bag at the threshold, whirls in, and I have her pressed to the door before it’s even finished swinging shut.
The formality dissolves. I bury my face in the crook of her neck, inhale the perfume she wears for events, the thrum of her skin underneath. I don’t realize I’m shaking until she slides her hands under my jacket, pushes it off my shoulders, and lets it hit the floor with a thud. Her lips graze my ear. “We don’t have to play anymore,” she whispers. “It’s just us.”
I can’t help it—I laugh, and the laugh is wild, ragged, nothing like the laughs I give the world. “Emma, I wanted to do this the minute I landed. Correction: before I landed. No, all fucking week.”
She hooks fingers in my shirt and yanks me close, her mouth an electric bruise on mine. I walk her backwards—she’s pulling me every step—to the bed. She rips open my buttons with hands that, days ago, I saw arranging flowers while she FaceTimed me from her kitchen. The way she moves in here is different: fast, shameless, not a single atom of pretending anywhere in her body.
When she’s on the bed, I crawl after, mouth at her knees, up her thighs. She’s restless, half-writhing, her dress hiked until it’s just useless silk. I push her legs wider, drag my tongue along the wet heat of her through delicate lace. She arches, gasps when I pull the fabric aside and taste her directly, my tongue parting her slick folds. I devour her like a starving man, licking deep inside her, then circling her swollen clit until she’s trembling. Her lipstick is smudged, hair falling loose as she watches me with glazed eyes.
Her legs lock around my head as I suck her clit between my lips. The room fills with her scent—citrus and sweat and the musky sweetness of her arousal. I slide two fingers inside her, curling them against that spot that makes her back bow off the mattress. She’s dripping wet, clenching around my fingers as I thrust them in rhythm with my tongue. Her hands scrabble forthe sheets, for my shoulders, for anything solid as she starts to pulse against my mouth.
“Fuck, Asher,” she says, breath half-caught as she comes hard. “Fuck, I missed you.”
I crawl up to her, kiss her slowly this time, tasting the tang of her on her tongue. She kisses back with something like desperation, a hunger bigger than either of us deserves. We roll, tangle, and she’s got her hands down my jeans, working me out, stroking me in a way that immediately short-circuits every thought I have.
I want to tell her… what? That I’m in love with her? That nothing about this feels fake anymore, that somewhere between the bullshit of red carpets and the endless murk of paparazzi flashes, I got lost and found myself in the way she looks at me with genuine eyes? I’m not an idiot. I know how easy it is to get swept. But when she rolls me over and straddles my chest, hair curtaining us in, I can’t think of anything but her.
She goes down on me, lips soft at first, then hungry, the sharp edge of her tongue tracing veins that make me gasp and buck. It’s all wet suction and obscene sounds, her hair trailing over my thighs as she takes me deeper than I thought possible. She smiles around me, eyes locked onto mine, and it’s the filthiest, most perfect thing I’ve ever seen. The self-possession in her gaze—the knowledge that she owns every inch of me right now, that she’s drawing out every last ounce of control with each deliberate swallow—is almost too much. I twist a hand in her hair, try to warn her how close I am, but she just hollows her cheeks and takes me to the back of her throat, deep and relentless, until I’m cursing and fighting not to black out.
I pull her up, dislodging her with a desperate groan. I flip her, pin her down, mouth everywhere—the taste of her, the imprint of her breath on my neck, the way she arches up to meet me. I line up and push my stiff cock inside her. Without hesitation,she wraps her legs around my waist and urges me deeper. For a second, I can’t speak. It’s all body and heartbeat, every nerve ending singing. I bury my face in her hair.
My voice breaks when I finally speak. “I missed this. I missed the way you taste, the way you feel around me, the way you come apart.”
She tangles her fingers in mine, teeth grazing my ear. “Show me how much.”
I drive into her so deep she cries out, her nails carving half-moons into my shoulders. She wraps her legs higher around my waist, taking me impossibly deeper, her body slick with sweat. The sound of skin against skin fills the room as I pound into her relentlessly, her breasts bouncing with each thrust. When I come, it’s with a guttural groan that tears from somewhere primal, my entire body convulsing as I empty myself inside her.
We lie tangled, panting, her thighs still trembling. After a minute, she whimpers against my neck: “Please tell me you’re not leaving again.”
I tighten my arms around her, drag her so close I can feel the hard points of her nipples against my chest. “I’m not going anywhere. If they want me on set, they can come to this suite and watch me fuck you senseless again.”
She laughs, breathless and dark. “I’d like to see them try.”
We sleep for an hour, wake up, and do it all again, this time even messier, laughing so hard we almost roll off the bed. It’s after midnight when we finally get up, raid the minibar for Perrier and hotel chocolate, and eat it naked on the balcony, the air cold enough to raise goosebumps. She leans into my chest, shivering,and I spread the duvet around her like a cape. The city below is violet, almost blue, all the rooftops glinting with rain.
I want this to last. I know it won’t. We’re still on the clock—she has morning interviews, I have the PR grind, and in three days, the headlines will need a new angle. But for now, in this window of silence, I can tell her anything.
She leans her head back and looks up at me. “What are you thinking about?”
“About how I’m the luckiest cliche you’ll meet this week,” I say, and kiss her nose, then her lips, then the hollow of her throat.
“Oh, please,” she deadpans, “I’ve met five men this week who said they were falling for me. All of them had chin implants.”
I press her closer, refusing to give myself an out. “Not just falling. I crashed and burned six weeks ago, but I can’t find a way to admit it.” I wait for her to laugh, but she just blinks, long and slow.
She’s still for a second, the city noise hushes behind her. Then she speaks, voice shaky: “You know, I keep waiting for the spell to break. For one of us to ruin it.” Her lips quirk. “But I keep not wanting it to break, and that’s what scares me.”
I slide my hand over hers. “Not gonna break. Worst case, we buy a chateau, move here, get really into cheese.”
