When I arrive, the hotel is forgettable, the kind of place people stay when they need somewhere clean, cheap and quiet but they have no intention of staying in their room longer than they need to sleep and shower. There's no doorman stationed at the entrance or concierge hovering in the lobby.
The side entrance Carter specified opens onto a service corridor that leads directly to an elevator bank.
The elevator climbs with a soft mechanical hum. My reflection stares back at me from the mirrored walls, pale and tense, dark circles under my eyes from the sleep I didn't get. I'm wearing jeans and a button-down because I refused to put any more thought into my appearance than that. This isn't a date. This isn't anything romantic or meaningful. We're going to talk about how to handle the media circus and coordinate our public response. Or we’re going to talk about his family. I'm going to leave with my dignity intact.
I've been telling myself that all day. I've rehearsed every possible conversation in my head a dozen times. I can handle a rich entitled alpha like Carter Crane.
The elevator stops with a soft chime. I walk down the corridor on unsteady legs, my palms sweating and find the room number he gave me.
I raise my hand to knock.
The door opens before I can.
Carter stands in the doorway, and for a moment neither of us moves.
He's not wearing a suit. That's the first thing I notice, stupid and irrelevant, but my brain latches onto it anyway because I've never seen him in anything else.
He's in a dark sweater and slacks, casual in a way that makes him look younger and more human, less like the polished politician from the press conferences and more like a real person.
The second thing I notice is the scent.
It reaches me before I've even crossed the threshold and it's so much worse than it was in the studio.
There's no crowd to dilute it here and no competing perfumes and colognes. Just Carter, three feet away, his scent filling the doorway and wrapping around me and pulling me forward like a hand on a leash.
Every argument I rehearsed evaporates.
Every wall I built crumbles.
Carter's eyes meet mine, grey-blue and intent, his pupils already widening as my own scent reaches him. His chest rises and falls and I watch the way his hands curl into fists at his sides.
I step inside. The door swings shut behind me with a soft click.
We stare at each other.
The silence stretches between us, growing heavier by the second. It fills the room like water, pressing against my ears, my chest, my skin. I can hear my own heartbeat and the soft in and out of Carter's breathing.
A muscle twitches near his temple, jumping beneath his skin in an erratic rhythm. He's holding himself so still that I can see the effort vibrating through him, the control it's taking not to move, and something about that stillness makes me want to shatter it.
All of my blood has rushed south, pooling hot and insistent between my legs, and I can feel myself getting wet with mortifying speed, my body responding to his presence with absolutely no input from my brain.
His nostrils flare. His pupils blow wider, swallowing the grey-blue until only a thin ring remains.
He can smell it. He can smell exactly what he's doing to me.
His control breaks.
Or maybe mine does. I genuinely don't know who moves first. One second we're standing three feet apart, frozen in that charged silence, and the next his hands are fisted in my hair and his mouth is on mine and I'm being driven backward into the wall hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
The kiss is fierce and consuming, all desperation, his body pinning mine flat against the wall while his hands grip my face and tilt it exactly where he wants it.
I grab fistfuls of his sweater and yank him closer, kissing him back just as hard. When I bite his lower lip I feel him growl into my mouth, a low rumbling sound that vibrates through my chest and settles deep in my core, and the noise I make in response is embarrassingly close to a whimper.
We're tearing at each other's clothes with no finesse whatsoever, just desperate grabbing and pulling. His sweater comes off over his head and I hear it rip but I can't bring myself to care. Then his hands are under my shirt, his palms hot against my bare skin, and I'm shaking so hard I can barely get his belt undone.
He spins me around without warning and presses my chest against the wall. The plaster is cool against my flushed cheek, a sharp contrast to the heat of his body behind me, and I hear my own moan like it's coming from somewhere very far away. His mouth finds the curve of my neck and his teeth scrape against my pulse point and my hips jerk backward involuntarily, seeking contact.
He's hard. I can feel him, pressed against my ass, and a fresh wave of arousal courses through me.
